Virbac Veterinary HPM Senior Neutered Dog Small & Toy review

You will find this one in the Good band, which is also home to the everyday run of adult dry foods, so the two sit level on the headline and separate on the detail. Protein is high for a lean senior recipe, starch is light for a kibble, and the added vitamins and minerals are each dosed in print. The marks against are the shared species names and the share of the fibre that arrives as purified powder. For a small older dog whose weight has crept up, it does its job neatly.

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

The analysis is the whole point of this bag. Fat is held to 12% and crude fibre pushed to 10.5%, with energy at 311 kcal per 100g. A small dog can keep a proper looking dinner in front of them while taking in less than they once did.

The meat has not been cut to get there. Dehydrated pork and poultry proteins come first, with protein reading 32% as fed and 35.2% of dry matter. Pork is uncommon enough in British dog food that a good many older dogs will be meeting it here for the first time.

The only cereal is rice, and peas with pea fibre sit behind it. Carbohydrate is estimated at 30.0% as fed and 33.0% of dry matter, against 46.2% for the typical adult dry food.

The senior and small-dog extras sit at the end. Fish oil brings marine omega 3. Egg membrane is where the collagen and its related joint compounds come from, fermented hyaluronic acid works to the same thinking, and seaweed meal adds iodine and trace minerals. The joint entries carry no percentage, so treat them as helpful extras and not as a measured supplement.

One entry reads worse than it is and one reads better than it is. Dried sugar beet pulp is the fibrous residue left after sugar extraction, not a sweetener, and there is no sugar on this list at all. Poultry, on the other hand, is never pinned down. Chicken, turkey, duck or goose could all be behind that word, and the label says nothing about which bird sits in the protein, the hydrolysed protein or the fat.

£9.43 a kilo, in 1.5kg, 3kg and 7kg bags.

The 15kg dog we use as a standard reference is bigger than this bag is built for. On that basis it comes to about 270 grams a day, assuming around 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate), or £2.55 a day. For the dogs it is actually meant for, the label asks 95 grams a day at 5kg and 150 grams at 10kg.