Home / Dog food / Hill's Science Diet / Adult Perfect Digestion Small Bites Chicken & Barley Recipe Dog Food

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Adult Perfect Digestion Small Bites Chicken & Barley Recipe Dog Food

Dry food · adult dogs

A feeding-trial-validated, chicken-first dry food that's denser than 35% (you feed fewer cups). Cost-per-day isn't available yet — this SKU isn't price-matched.

THE FACTS, ONE SENTENCE — data as JSON · reference dog 40 lb · updated 2026-07-11

Tell us about your dogevery number on this page updates live ↓
40 lb
For a 40-lb adult: 2¾ cupsper day not pricedper day 5 daysbag lasts passes 2 fit checks ↓

Joint, kidney, dental or heart concerns? Labels can't honestly answer those — that's vet territory. Why we don't checkmark them →

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 LabelThe standardized pet-food panel
VPFD № HILL-S
verified 2026-07-11

Composition — dry-matter basis

why dry matter
Moisture hides the real recipe: kibble is ~10% water, canned food ~78%. Removing water puts every food on one scale, so these are the only nutrition numbers that can be compared across foods. As-fed label values shown small.
Protein 22.9%label: 20.6% min lower than 95% of dry foods
Fat 11.9%label: 10.7% min lower than 89% of dry foods
Fiber 4.4%label: 4% max lower than 69% of dry foods
Est. carbohydrates ash not disclosed → 8% assumed, so this is an estimate ≈51.9%computed anchor available once more brands disclose ash
Calcium / Phosphorus extended guarantees: none verified yet Not yet verifiedcalcium/phosphorus no ratio to anchor

Calories & cost — for your 40-lb adult dog

Calorie density 368 kcal/cup3607 kcal/kg typical — the median dry food is 388 (median 388) — you feed more cups
Daily serving2¾ cups
Cost per day
3.5-lb bag lasts5 days

Cost per 1,000 kcal not available yet — this SKU isn't price-matched to a current retail listing. Serving math uses standard veterinary energy formulas — see the formula.

Standards & ingredients

AAFCO statement
what this means
Two kinds of AAFCO claims exist. Most foods are only "formulated to meet" nutrient profiles — a paper calculation. A smaller set carry the stronger claim: fed to real dogs in AAFCO-procedure trials ("Animal feeding tests using AAFCO procedures substantiate…").
Feeding trials ✓ · maintenance
First five ingredients (by pre-cooking weight)Chicken · Cracked Pearled Barley · Brown Rice · Brewers Rice · Whole Grain Oats
Named animal protein first; named meals onlyYes
Legumes in first 10 (FDA DCM inquiry)None
BHA / BHT preservativesNone on label
Carrageenan (thickener)None
Ethoxyquin
why unknown
When a fish-meal supplier adds ethoxyquin, U.S. rules don't require it on the finished label — so no label can prove its absence for recipes containing fish meal. We report this as a gap rather than guessing.
None — no fish meal in this recipe

Safety

FDA recalls — Hill's Science Diet, since 2023None on record
ManufacturerNot confirmed from label
Label transparency 7 of 15 standard fields
Green = verified favorable · amber = gap in the record · red = verified unfavorable · gray = not disclosed / neutral fact.
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.

Validated for adult dogsAAFCO statement covers adult maintenance.
Passes our sensitive-stomach checksNamed animal protein first, and no unnamed by-products in the ingredient list.
·
Contains chickenNot selected as a concern for your dog — shown here for reference.

The source material

The full ingredient list

Every flag on the Verified Label is computed from this list. Ingredients are ordered by pre-cooking weight — the first five carry the most information.

Chicken, Cracked Pearled Barley, Brown Rice, Brewers Rice, Whole Grain Oats, Whole Grain Corn, Corn Protein Meal, Chicken Meal, Chicken Fat, Chicken Liver Flavor, Pork Liver Flavor, Ground Pecan Shells, Soybean Oil, Lactic Acid, Potassium Chloride, Flaxseed, Dried Beet Pulp, Dried Citrus Pulp, Iodized Salt, Choline Chloride, Calcium Carbonate, Dicalcium Phosphate, Fish Oil, Pressed Cranberries, Pumpkin, 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), minerals (Ferrous Sulfate, Zinc Oxide, Copper Sulfate, Manganous Oxide, Calcium Iodate, Sodium Selenite), Taurine, Mixed Tocopherols for freshness, Natural Flavors, Beta-Carotene

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 four 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.

Owns its manufacturing Owns its plants

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 →
Employs a qualified nutritionist Yes — sourced

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 →
AAFCO feeding trials Yes — sourced

238 of 309 verified labels in our corpus carry an AAFCO feeding-trial substantiation statement.

source →
Peer-reviewed research Yes — sourced

174 PubMed-indexed papers carry "Hill's Pet Nutrition" in an author affiliation (animal/pet-domain filtered) — a reproducible floor, not a total.

source →
Parent company Colgate-Palmolive Company Founded 1968 Headquarters / plant Overland Park, Kansas FDA recalls on record 2 on record

Full company scorecard, sources, and every SKU we've verified for this brand: Hill's Science Diet brand page →