Home / Dog food / Hill's Science Diet / Adult 7+ Senior Vitality Small & Mini Chicken & Rice Recipe Dog Food
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Hill's Science Diet Adult 7+ Senior Vitality Small & Mini Chicken & Rice Recipe Dog Food
A feeding-trial-validated, chicken-first dry food that's denser than 18% (you feed fewer cups). We don't have a cost per day for this food yet.
THE FACTS, ONE SENTENCE — data as JSON · reference dog 40 lb · updated 2026-07-11
The evidence
The Verified Label
Every food on this site gets this exact panel — same fields, same order, sourced from the official label — so brands finally become comparable. Dots show where this food sits among all 494 dry foods we've verified.
verified 2026-07-11
Composition — dry-matter basis
why dry matter
Calories & cost — for your 40-lb adult dog
No cost per 1,000 kcal yet: we haven't matched this food to a current Amazon listing. Serving math uses standard veterinary energy formulas — see the formula.
Standards & ingredients
what this means
why unknown
Safety
Source: official label source (official) · anchors: 494 verified dry dog foods (360 priced) · how to read this label
The fit
For your dog, specifically
Checked for a 40-lb adult with a sensitive stomach — the same published criteria our finder uses. Change your dog above and these update.
The source material
The full ingredient list
Every flag above is computed from this list. Why order is by pre-cooking weight, and how splitting bends it →
Chicken, Brewers Rice, Yellow Peas, Cracked Pearled Barley, Whole Grain Oats, Whole Grain Corn, Egg Product, Chicken Fat, Chicken Liver Flavor, Corn Protein Meal, Soybean Oil, Flaxseed, Pork Liver Flavor, Lactic Acid, L-Lysine, Potassium Chloride, Calcium Carbonate, Dicalcium Phosphate, Carrots, Dried Tomato Pomace, Dried Citrus Pulp, Spinach, Fish Oil, Iodized Salt, Lipoic Acid, vitamins (Vitamin E Supplement, L-Ascorbyl-2-Polyphosphate (source of Vitamin C), Niacin Supplement, Thiamine Mononitrate, Vitamin A Supplement, Calcium Pantothenate, Riboflavin Supplement, Biotin, Vitamin B12 Supplement, Pyridoxine Hydrochloride, Folic Acid, Vitamin D3 Supplement), Choline Chloride, Taurine, minerals (Ferrous Sulfate, Zinc Oxide, Copper Sulfate, Manganous Oxide, Calcium Iodate, Sodium Selenite), Natural Flavors, L-Tryptophan, Mixed Tocopherols for freshness, L-Carnitine, Beta-Carotene
6 ingredients in this list are ones we hold sourced evidence on , and 1 of them is genuinely contested rather than merely unpopular online.
- Peas · ingredient 3ContestedA pulse (legume) used in many grain-free foods as a plant protein and carbohydrate source. Peas are central to an open FDA investigation, begun in July 2018, into a possible link between diets high in peas, other pulses, and potatoes and canine dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM); 93% of reported products contained peas and/or lentils.
- Fish oil (EPA + DHA omega-3) · ingredient 23Well supportedMarine-source omega-3 fatty acids (EPA and DHA) from fish oil. A randomized, double-blinded controlled trial (Roush 2010) found improved weight-bearing in dogs with osteoarthritis, and a 2022 meta-analysis identified clear clinical analgesic efficacy for omega-3-enriched diets and supplements.
- Mixed tocopherols (natural vitamin E) · ingredient 32Well supportedA blend of vitamin E forms (alpha-, beta-, gamma-, delta-tocopherol) used as a natural-source antioxidant to slow fat rancidity, commonly chosen as an alternative to synthetic preservatives. EFSA concluded that tocopherol-rich extracts are safe for all animal species and the consumer and are efficacious antioxidants in feed.
- Brewers Rice · ingredient 2NeutralAn AAFCO-defined ingredient consisting of the small, broken fragments of rice kernels separated during milling. It is a digestible carbohydrate and energy source nutritionally similar to other rice; the 'brewers' name reflects how the fragments are sourced, not lower nutritional quality.
- Flaxseed (ALA omega-3) · ingredient 12NeutralA plant source of the short-chain omega-3 ALA. Dogs convert ALA to the long-chain omega-3s inefficiently: a controlled feeding study (Dunbar 2010) found flaxseed raised serum EPA but produced no measurable DHA.
- Taurine (supplemental) · ingredient 28NeutralA sulfur amino acid that dogs can normally synthesize from methionine and cysteine, so it is not classically essential for them. However, some breeds (e.g., golden retrievers) and some diets are linked to low taurine status and dilated cardiomyopathy: an observational study (Ontiveros 2020) associated non-traditional, largely grain-free diets with taurine deficiency and DCM-consistent echocardiographic changes in golden retrievers, though causation and mechanism remain under investigation.
Nutritional twins
Priced close matches
This food has no verified price yet — these are the closest label matches that do.
Label-composition matches only: same species, form, and growth stage; same primary protein where both are known; grain-free preserved; protein within 4 points and fat within 4 points, and estimated carbs within 8 points, on a dry-matter basis. Not a medical or quality recommendation.
The maker
Who makes this — and how they back it up
The five questions the WSAVA nutrition guidelines tell you to ask a pet-food company. Every answer is sourced or marked as an undisclosed gap — never guessed. This is the "is it made competently?" axis that star-rating sites skip.
Same source: 'Hill's is currently building a new canned pet food manufacturing facility in Kansas... and in May completed the acquisition of a canned pet food plant in Italy from Nutriamo.' Indicates Hill's owns and operates its own manufacturing plants.
source →Hill's explicitly employs four ACVN Diplomates (board-certified veterinary nutritionists) plus PhD nutritionists per same page ('Our staff of PhD nutritionists, food scientists, flavorists and veterinarians').
source →167 of 212 labels we checked carry an AAFCO feeding-trial substantiation statement.
source →covers: finished-product nutrient analysis (page also says each ingredient is examined and final safety checks run daily on every product; no Salmonella/batch detail on this page). Hill's company-wide page. NOTE: hillspet.com returns HTTP 403 to plain scripted requests; quote confirmed in-session via WebFetch only.
source →179 PubMed papers (animal/pet filtered) list Hill's Pet Nutrition in an author address; we checked 179 and 178 really name the company. A floor, not a total.
source →Full company scorecard, sources, and every SKU we've verified for this brand: Hill's Science Diet brand page →