Virbac Veterinary HPM Senior Large & Medium review

This lands in our Good band, the same band that holds the middle of the dry adult market, so the placing does little to separate them. The strengths are real enough: high protein for a senior food, starch kept well below the usual kibble load, and a set of extras aimed squarely at ageing joints. What holds it back is naming rather than nutrition, since the meat entries cover two species and the fat names only the family, and a large share of the fibre is purified powder. As a daily food for an older medium or large dog, it reads sound.

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

Senior foods have a habit of cutting protein on the way through, and this one does not. Dehydrated pork and poultry proteins take the top of the list, and protein reads 32% as fed and 35.2% of dry matter. That is the right direction of travel for a dog whose muscle is harder to hold onto than it used to be.

Rice is the only cereal and peas sit behind it. Carbohydrate is estimated at 29.0% as fed and 31.9% of dry matter, comfortably under the 46.2% typical of adult dry food. The meat carries more of this bag than it does in most on the shelf.

The senior thinking shows up late on the list. Fish oil brings the marine omega 3s a dog uses more readily than plant ones. Egg membrane carries collagen and the joint compounds that go with it, and fermented hyaluronic acid belongs to the same idea. Not one of the three carries a declared amount, so read them as a helping hand and not as a measured supplement. The fish oil does mean the recipe is not fish free.

Fibre is doing a job here too. Crude fibre reaches 9.5%, drawn from lignocellulose and psyllium husk, from pea fibre and from dried sugar beet pulp. That keeps an older dog satisfied on a ration that suits a slower routine. The beet pulp reads worse than it is: it is what remains after the sugar has been extracted, so nothing on this list sweetens the food.

Ash is low at 6.5%, calcium works out at 1.21% of dry matter, and the vitamins and trace minerals are each dosed in print, taurine included at 1500 mg/kg. One gap runs through the whole range. No single bird is ever named for the poultry, not in the protein, not in the hydrolysed protein that makes the kibble appealing, and not in the fat.

£6.50 a kilo, sold in 3kg and 12kg bags.

As a guide, a 15kg adult in moderate condition needs about 257 grams a day, assuming around 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate), which comes to £1.67 a day. The bag's own table asks 235 grams for the same dog. The two are close, and your dog's waistline can settle the rest.