Virbac Veterinary HPM Adult Neutered Dog Large & Medium review

Our scoring lands this in the Good band, and the middle of the adult dry shelf lives there too, so the headline tells you less than the label does. Two readings push it up: the protein is high for a kibble and the starch load is unusually light. Two pull it back: the meat entries carry two species under one name, and a good share of the fibre arrives as purified powder rather than as food. This bag is written for a neutered medium or large adult, and for that dog neither of those readings gets in the way.

Ingredients, as declared: Dehydrated pork and poultry proteins; Rice; Lignocellulose; Hydrolysed pork and poultry proteins; Peas; Poultry Fats; Pea fiber; Linseed; Minerals; Dried (sugar) beet pulp; Fructo-oligosaccharides; Psyllium fibre (Plantago (L.) spp.); Inactivated brewer's yeast; Inactivated Lactobacillus helveticus.

The list opens on dehydrated pork and poultry proteins. Dehydrated is the word doing the work. These proteins are weighed dry, so the printed figure survives into the bowl. That is why protein reads 34% as fed and 37.4% of dry matter. British bowls do not see much pork. For a dog raised on chicken and beef, that is a genuinely fresh taste.

Rice is the one cereal on the list, and the one real starch. By kibble standards there is not a lot of it. Carbohydrate works out at 25.0% as fed and 27.5% of dry matter, against 46.2% for the typical adult dry food. Less of this bowl comes from plants than usual.

The fibre stack is the other half of the plan. Lignocellulose comes first. Purified plant fibre gives the bowl bulk and hardly any energy at all. Pea fibre, dried sugar beet pulp and psyllium husk sit behind it, and fructo-oligosaccharides feed the gut's own bacteria. It reads clinical rather than wholesome, and that is fair enough: this is fibre chosen to make a smaller ration feel like a full meal, not fibre that arrived attached to a vegetable.

One entry looks like a warning and is not. The sugar has already gone from dried sugar beet pulp, and fibre is what is left. There is no sweetener anywhere on this list. Omega 3 arrives in its plant form as linseed, inactivated brewer's yeast adds B vitamins, and the inactivated Lactobacillus helveticus is a heat treated gut entry. Taurine is dosed at 1500 mg/kg and choline at 3000 mg/kg, neither of which a dry food is obliged to add.

The honest limitation is naming. Pork and poultry share a single entry twice over, in the dehydrated protein and again in the hydrolysed protein that keeps the kibble tasting worth finishing. Behind the word poultry sits chicken, turkey, duck or goose. Most dogs will never care. This label cannot tell you which bird upsets your dog.

£7.00 a kilo, sold in 3kg, 7kg and 12kg bags.

As a guide, a 15kg adult in moderate condition needs about 267 grams a day, assuming around 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate), which works out at £1.87 a day. The label's own table asks 215 grams for that dog, leaner because that is what a neutered recipe is for. Start from the label and let the waistline decide from there.