Hill's Prescription Diet Hills Prescription Diet Gastrointestinal Biome Mini review

Ingredients, as declared: Cereals, meat and animal derivatives (chicken 9%), derivatives of vegetable origin, oils and fats, vegetable protein extracts, fruit, seeds, minerals, vegetables. Highly digestible ingredients: Chicken and turkey meal, brewers' rice, maize, maize gluten meal, animal fat, vegetable oil.

Cereals head the ingredient statement, and the meat behind them is declared as meat and animal derivatives with chicken picked out inside it at 9%. Behind them the label lists fruit, seeds, minerals and vegetables, along with vegetable protein extracts, oils and fats and derivatives of vegetable origin. Almost none of those front entries names an actual ingredient. They are headings.

The naming happens in a second list, which Hill's prints as its highly digestible ingredients: chicken and turkey meal, brewers' rice, maize, maize gluten meal, animal fat and vegetable oil. Turkey therefore sits in the recipe next to chicken. Maize turns up twice over, once on its own and once as gluten meal, and that second entry lifts some of the protein figure.

Crude fibre is declared at 6.9%, working out at 7.6% once the moisture is taken off. The printed list does not itemise a named prebiotic blend, and an owner tracking how a gut diet is put together will find no fibre breakdown on the bag.

On the analysis, protein converts to 23.5% of dry matter and fat to 14.5%, with the carbohydrate estimate landing at 47.9% and energy at 343 kcal per 100g. A kibble assembled around digestibility rather than around a big meat percentage will read this way, and that is the design the maker has chosen rather than something slipping. Calcium comes out at 1.05% of dry matter.

Every added mineral carries a dose beside it: zinc at 148mg, iron at 84.5mg, copper at 8.3mg, manganese at 8.7mg, iodine at 2.1mg and selenium at 0.2mg. A natural antioxidant closes the panel. The bag's own guide starts at 35 grams a day for a 1kg dog, gives 185 grams beside the 10kg line and reaches 615 grams at 50kg. What your dog should actually be given is a number to take from the vet who prescribed it.

Two bag sizes are listed for it, 1kg and 3kg.