Virbac Veterinary HPM Clinical: Dermatology Support D1 review

Ingredients, as declared: Dehydrated pork and poultry proteins; potato starch; animal fats; hydrolysed pork and poultry proteins; faba bean hulls; peas; minerals; beet pulp; linseed; lignocellulose; fish oil; sunflower oil; psyllium fibre (Plantago (L.) spp.); fructo-oligosaccharides; brewers yeast; borage seed; Lactobacillus acidophilus; chondroitin sulfate.

Six of the 8 open with dehydrated pork and poultry proteins, and hydrolysed pork and poultry proteins appear a few places further down in every single recipe. Hydrolysis breaks a protein into fragments small enough that the immune system is less likely to react to them, which is why it shows up so consistently in a clinical range. Poultry is a group of birds, not one species. Animal fats name nothing at all.

That combination needs reading slowly when an exclusion plan is in play. The bird behind poultry may be chicken, turkey or duck. It can move between batches too. Most of the fats are given by category and one is named as poultry fats, while 5 recipes carry fish oil and another is built on hydrolysed fish protein. What a range like this does is narrow the list of things a dog meets, not reduce it to one named animal.

The carbohydrate side is shared out between rice, potato starch, peas and faba bean hulls, while the fibre side leans on lignocellulose, beet pulp and psyllium husk. Lignocellulose brings bulk and almost no energy. Being a purified plant fibre is exactly why it climbs the list in the weight diets. Fructo-oligosaccharides and brewers yeast run through the range, and every recipe names Lactobacillus acidophilus near the end.

Read the analyses side by side and the figures fan out by job. Protein as fed runs from 20.5% in the kidney diet to 34% in most of the rest. Fat goes from 11.5% to 22%, crude fibre from 4.5% to 15%, and energy from 274 to 391 kcal per 100g. Held up against an ordinary adult kibble some of those sit well outside the usual, in both directions. That spread is the entire premise of a clinical range, not a fault in any one bag.

Every label prints a full vitamin and trace mineral panel with a dose against each line, down to folic acid and B12, and each carries added taurine and choline. The doses sit at the same level across the range with one exception, noted below.

Feeding guides here give a single daily amount for each bodyweight, carrying on up to a 60kg dog. They differ noticeably from one diet to the next even at the same weight. Which of the 8 belongs in your dog's bowl, and how much of it, gets settled in the consulting room rather than off the back of the bag.

The skin diet is the only one carrying sunflower oil and borage seed, and it puts them alongside fish oil and linseed. Potato starch rather than rice takes the carbohydrate job, with faba bean hulls and peas behind it, and chondroitin sulfate closes the list. As fed it declares 34% protein, 18% fat and 5% crude fibre, at 375 kcal per 100g. The label covers puppies through to older dogs, which is not true of every diet in the range.

Bags come in 1.5kg, 3kg, 7kg and 12kg depending on which diet you are looking at, with the smallest bag on the digestive one only and the 7kg limited to 4 of the 8. Per kilo the range runs from £6.92 to £10.75. For a 15kg dog the label amounts work out between £1.75 and £2.40 a day.