Pro Plan Veterinary Diets HP Hepatic Dry review

Ingredients, as declared: Corn1.2, Dried egg1, Soya meal1, Dried beet pulp1, Pork fat, Digest1, Minerals, Fish oil, Coconut oil, Dried chicory root, Cellulose, 1 protein sources, 2 highly digestible carbohydrate sources

The label uses its own numbering in place of plain description. Corn carries two markers, one flagging it as a protein source and one as a highly digestible carbohydrate source. Dried egg, soya meal, dried beet pulp and digest are all marked as protein contributors as well. Counting beet pulp and a palatant coating towards protein is an unusual piece of labelling, and it shows how the recipe reaches its protein figure without meat.

Pork fat and fish oil are the only other animal entries, so both of those species arrive as fats and neither as a meat. Digest is animal-derived too, though the list does not say from what. Dried chicory root brings inulin in as a prebiotic and cellulose sits behind it, with crude fibre landing at 3.8% of dry matter.

Protein converts to 20.7% of dry matter while fat runs to 19.6%, with carbohydrate estimated at 49.4% and energy at 392 kcal per 100g. Protein sitting below fat is not an arrangement you meet often, and on a diet written for this purpose it is the intended structure rather than an oversight. Reading those figures against your own dog's results is your vet's work, not something to settle from a bag.

The added panel names vitamin E at 540 IU per kilo and vitamin C at 140 mg per kilo. Then come iodine at 2.5, manganese at 7.1, zinc at 180 and selenium at 0.24, with antioxidants closing it out. Copper and iron are absent from that list, and in diets of this category leaving them off is a formulation decision rather than a gap in the panel.

The label's guide begins at 65 grams a day for a 2.5kg dog and climbs to 610 grams at 70kg, with 215 grams marked against 15kg.

It comes in a single 3kg bag, at £5.69 a kilo. Working from the energy figure, a 15kg dog needs around 214 grams a day, which puts the daily cost at £1.22.