Hill's Science Plan Puppy Stew with Chicken & added Vegetables review

This tin lands in our Average band, a good way under the Excellent band a typical wet puppy food sits in, with protein and processing reading Good and transparency reading Average. Two things account for that. The ingredients list is built almost entirely from umbrella terms, and the analysis is short enough that protein, fat and fibre are all there is to work from. Without a declared moisture figure there is no way to convert those onto a dry matter basis, so the like-for-like comparison we would normally make is simply not available on this one.

Ingredients, as declared: Meat and animal derivatives (chicken 15%), cereals, derivatives of vegetable origin, vegetables (1.7%), minerals, eggs and egg derivatives, various sugars, oils and fats.

Meat and animal derivatives opens the list with chicken declared at 15%. That leaves the majority of the animal content unnamed, drawn from a category European labelling law defines broadly enough to cover almost any part of almost any warm-blooded land animal. Good material or poor can sit behind that wording, and a buyer has no way of telling which is in the tin.

Cereals and derivatives of vegetable origin follow, and vegetables earn their own line at 1.7%. Eggs and egg derivatives are a welcome sight further down, since egg protein is easy to digest and complete on amino acids. That far down the list, though, the inclusion will be a modest one.

Various sugars is the entry that stands out. Sugars go into wet foods for palatability and for the look of the gravy, and they do that job. A growing dog takes nothing nutritionally from them that the rest of the tin could not supply. Nobody needs to rule the tin out over it, but do know it is in there.

The analysis is where this label runs shortest. Protein is given at 6.7%, fat at 4.2% and crude fibre at 0.8%, all as fed, and then it stops. With no moisture and no ash printed, those cannot be converted onto a dry matter basis, so setting them against another food would be comparing two different things rather than one. Energy is declared at 90 kcal per 100g.

There is no calcium figure printed anywhere on this pack. For a growth food that is a real gap, because calcium governs how a skeleton is laid down and a big pup's feeding plan is built around knowing it. The added mineral panel does at least come with doses attached, with zinc at 18.5 mg/kg, iron at 12.4 mg/kg, copper at 1.8 mg/kg, manganese at 1.5 mg/kg and iodine at 0.4 mg/kg.

£6.22 a kilo, sold in 363g tins.

A growing dog works through more tin each month, and the size they are heading towards moves the figure too. Start with the guide on the pack and let their condition steer it from there.