4Health Turkey And Potato Review

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In addition to this 4Health Turkey and Potato review, you can check our main review of 4Health dog food for even more information on how the food is made, recalls, company history, and their quality control history.

Product Overview

As with many private label brands, information about 4Health is harder to find than for national brands. However, Tractor Supply Company does provide ingredients and nutritional information on their company web site, so you can find out more about this food than many other private label foods. They advertise the food in their store circulars, too. Since it is a private label brand you can only buy it at Tractor Supply Company stores.

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First 5 Ingredients Overview

This grain free food from Tractor Supply features turkeyand turkey meal as the first two ingredients. These are both good sources of animal protein. Turkey is also a good source of Riboflavin and Phosphorus, and a very good source of Selenium. As usual, whole turkey contains a lot of moisture so this ingredient would appear lower in the list if the water were removed. However, turkey meal contains several times as much protein as whole turkey since it has been dried and most of the moisture has been removed. It’s an excellent source of protein in dog food.

The next ingredient is whole potatoes. Potatoes are a carbohydrate and they provide some nutrition for your dog. Potatoes are a good source of dietary fiber as well as Vitamin C, Vitamin B6, Potassium and Manganese. They are gluten-free and most dogs can tolerate them well.

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The food also contains tapioca as a carbohydrate which adds little nutritional value. It’s a starch from the cassava plant. Although it’s a food staple in some parts of the world it’s mainly known as a pudding and dessert in the U.S. Some dog owners give it to their dogs to help them gain weight since it adds calories to the diet.

We also find dried peas and pea protein. Peas can boost the protein content of a dog food. They also provide dietary fiber to the food and provide a lot of carbohydrates. Peas are a good source of vitamins and minerals. They provide Vitamin A, Niacin, Vitamin B6, Folate, Phosphorus and Copper, Vitamin C, Vitamin K, Thiamin and Manganese. However, some dogs have trouble digesting peas and they can lead to diarrhea. Other dogs can digest them without much problem. There is currently a lack of good research about their digestibility in dogs and more work needs to be done in this area. Peas are often used by dog food companies today as a substitute for corn and other grains.

This food also contains poultry by-product meal which is usually considered a less desirable ingredient. Better quality ingredients are generally named and specified such as whole chicken or chicken meal, or lamb meal. “Poultry” is a more generic term so you don’t exactly know what’s being used in this ingredient. By-products are also usually less desirable than whole meats or meals. AAFCO defines poultry by-product meal as:

“ground, rendered, clean parts of the carcass of slaughtered poultry, such as necks, feet, undeveloped eggs, intestines, exclusive of feathers, except in such amounts as might occur unavoidably in good processing practices.”

Even if you excuse the fact that AAFCO definitions generally make everything sound bad, this ingredient is less desirable. In this case it is poultry by- product meal, so most of the moisture has been removed and it is present in the food in concentrated form. This ingredient most likely contains a lot of protein and your dog probably wouldn’t object to it, but it’s not as nutritious as other protein sources.

Additional Ingredients Of Interest

While the turkey, turkey meal, and the poultry by-product meal provide some of the fat in the food, one of the main sources of fat comes from Poultry Fat (preserved with Mixed Tocopherols, a source of Vitamin E). Again, it is better if fat sources are named and specified as much as possible. In this case the fat comes from “poultry” which could be one or several kinds of poultry mixed together. Chicken, turkey, or duck, for example, would be better if they were specified as single sources of fat, but that’s not the case. This is a less desirable source of fat in the food.

The food also has vitamins and chelated minerals which make them easier for your dog to absorb.

Guaranteed Analysis

• Crude Protein (min) ….. 28.0%
• Crude Fat (min) ….. 15.0%
• Crude Fiber (max) ….. 4.0%
• Moisture (max) ….. 10.0%
• Zinc (min) ….. 200 mg/kg
• Selenium (min ) ….. 0.4 mg/kg
• Vitamin E (min) ….. 300 IU/kg
• *Omega-6 (min) ….. 2.5%
• *Omega-3 (min) ….. 0.4%
• *Glucosamine (Naturally occurring) (min) ….. 300 mg/kg
• *Chondroitin Sulfate (Naturally occurring) (min) ….. 100 mg/kg

• Caloric Content: 3,490 kilocalories per kilogram (kcal/kg, calculated) of Metabolizable Energy (ME) on an as fed basis; 360 kcal/cup.

*Not recognized as an essential nutrient by the AAFCO dog food nutrient profile.

Tractor Supply Company states the following in their description of this and other 4Health foods:

“4Health Grain Free Turkey & Potato Formula for Adult Dogs is specifically formulated to meet the nutritional needs of your adult dog.”

However, this is NOT the same as an AAFCO statement of nutritional adequacy. AAFCO statements are present on the packaging of 4Health products but it would be nice if the company would make them available on the web site.

Summary

4Health Grain Free Turkey & Potato Formula for Adult Dogs seems to be of slightly lesser quality than Tractor Supply’s other grain free foods. The use of poultry by-product meal and poultry fat in the food is not a good sign and there are many turkey dog foods that use turkey or other named fat sources instead of generic fats. Otherwise, the food has some good points but these ingredients make it just a medium grade food.

4Health Grain Free Turkey and Potato Formula for Adult Dogs has received our 3 paw rating.

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