Virbac Veterinary HPM Senior Small & Toy review

The typical adult dry bag lands in the same Good band as this one, and the band is where the reading starts, not where it ends. Sitting behind it here are a protein level that has not been trimmed for age, a starch load lighter than most kibbles manage, and a fully dosed vitamin and mineral panel. Working the other way are the shared meat names and a fibre figure built partly on purified powder. For a small senior dog eating well, it is a straightforward food to feed.

It is worth saying that the extras which mark this out as a senior recipe, the marine oil and the two joint entries, are the sort of detail our scoring only partly rewards. They still matter to the dog eating it.

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

Dehydrated pork and poultry proteins lead. Weighing happens once the water is out of them, and the headline survives into the finished kibble. Protein reads 32% as fed and 35.2% of dry matter, a proper level for a dog whose body is less efficient at holding muscle than it once was.

Peas and pea fibre sit behind rice, the only cereal here. Carbohydrate is estimated at 29.0% as fed and 31.9% of dry matter, where 46.2% is what a typical adult dry food carries. More of the work falls to the meat here than in most bags on the shelf.

Fat sits at 14% and energy at 327 kcal per 100g, a little richer than the neutered senior recipe alongside it. That suits an older small dog who is still busy and not carrying anything extra.

The senior thinking lives at the tail of the list. Fish oil supplies marine omega 3 for coat and general condition. Egg membrane is on the list for collagen and the joint compounds beside it, fermented hyaluronic acid is a familiar joint entry, and seaweed meal adds iodine and trace minerals. None of the joint entries is given a percentage, so they are support rather than a dose measured out on the label.

Two notes on reading the list. What remains after sugar extraction is fibre, and that is all dried sugar beet pulp is. Nothing here is sweetened whatever the entry suggests. And the poultry stays unnamed all the way down, whether it is the protein, the hydrolysed protein that makes it palatable or the fat. That is the one detail this label leaves out.

£8.00 a kilo, in 1.5kg, 3kg and 7kg bags.

Our standard 15kg reference dog is larger than this bag is intended for. On that basis feeding works out at about 257 grams a day, assuming around 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate), or £2.06 a day. The label's own table is the practical guide at this size, asking 115 grams a day for a 5kg dog and 180 grams at 10kg.