Virbac Veterinary HPM Senior Neutered Dog Large & Medium review

Our scoring settles this in the Good band, a band it shares with the average adult dry food, which makes the label the more useful read of the two. Protein holds up well for a lean senior recipe and the starch load is light for a kibble, both of which count. Set against that, two species share the two biggest entries, and much of the generous fibre figure is purified powder and not food. For an older neutered dog carrying a little too much, this is exactly the job it was built for.

Ingredients, as declared: Dehydrated pork and poultry proteins; Rice; Lignocellulose; Hydrolysed pork and poultry proteins; Peas; Poultry Fats; 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.

Neutering and age pull in the same direction, and the analysis answers both at once. Fat is the lowest of the family at 12%, crude fibre the highest at 10.5%, and energy comes down to 311 kcal per 100g. That is how a dog keeps eating a satisfying bowl while taking in less than they used to.

What has not been trimmed is the meat. The meat entries are dehydrated pork and poultry proteins, and protein reads 32% as fed and 35.2% of dry matter. Keeping the protein up while the fat comes down is the harder way to build a lean recipe, and much the better one for an older dog.

Rice remains the only cereal, with peas and pea fibre behind it. Carbohydrate is estimated at 30.0% as fed and 33.0% of dry matter, still noticeably under the 46.2% that is typical of adult dry food.

The senior additions come at the end. Fish oil supplies marine omega 3. The two joint entries are egg membrane and fermented hyaluronic acid, the first a natural source of collagen and the second a component of the fluid that cushions a joint. Neither carries a percentage, so they are support and not a measured dose.

Two clarifications for anyone reading the list closely. The dried sugar beet pulp entry is fibre, the part left over once the sugar has gone. Nothing here sweetens the food however that entry looks. And the poultry, in the protein, the hydrolysed protein and the fat alike, is never tied to a particular bird, which is the single place this otherwise detailed label stops short.

£7.83 a kilo, sold in 3kg and 12kg bags.

As a guide, a 15kg adult in moderate condition needs roughly 270 grams a day, assuming around 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate), or £2.11 a day. The bag's guide is leaner still at 200 grams for that dog, and a neutered senior recipe is meant to be leaner. Begin there and adjust as the waistline asks.