Hartwick Fields Dog Food Review (Canned)

Hartwick Fields canned product range is made up of 26 recipes with ratings varying from 2 to 2.5 stars. The average rating of the whole range is 2 stars.

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The table below shows each recipe in this range including our rating and the AAFCO nutrient profile: Growth (puppy), Maintenance (adult), All Life Stages, Supplemental or Unspecified.

Recipe and Label Analysis

Hartwick Fields Adult Loaf with Beef in Sauce recipe was selected to represent the other products in the line for a detailed recipe and nutrient analysis.

Ingredients Analysis

The first ingredient is water, which adds nothing but moisture to this food. Water is a routine finding in most wet dog foods.

The second ingredient is meat by-products, an item made from slaughterhouse waste. This is what’s left of slaughtered animals after all the prime striated muscle cuts have been removed.

With the exception of hair, horns, teeth and hooves, this item can include almost any other part of the animal.¹.

What’s worse, this particular item is anonymous. So, the meat itself can come from any combination of cattle, pigs, sheep or goats — which can make identifying specific food allergies impossible.

Although most meat by-products can be nutritious, we do not consider such vaguely described (generic) ingredients to be as high in quality as those derived from a named animal source.

The third ingredient is animal liver. Normally, liver can be considered a quality component. However, in this case, the source of the liver is not identified. For this reason, it’s impossible to judge the quality of this item.

The fourth ingredient is chicken. Chicken is considered “the clean combination of flesh and skin… derived from the parts or whole carcasses of chicken”.²

Chicken is naturally rich in the 10 essential amino acids required by a dog to sustain life.

The fifth ingredient is poultry by-products or slaughterhouse waste. This is what’s left of slaughtered poultry after all the prime cuts have been removed.

In addition to organs, this item can also include feet, beaks, undeveloped eggs and almost anything other than prime skeletal muscle.

The quality of this ingredient can vary, depending on the caliber of the raw materials obtained by the manufacturer.

Although this item contains all the amino acids a dog needs, we consider poultry by-products slightly lower in quality than a single species item (like chicken by-products).

The sixth ingredient is beef. Beef is defined as “the clean flesh derived from slaughtered cattle” and includes skeletal muscle or the muscle tissues of the tongue, diaphragm, heart or esophagus.³

Beef is naturally rich in all 10 essential amino acids required by a dog to sustain life.

The seventh ingredient is guar gum, a gelling or thickening agent found in many wet pet foods. Refined from dehusked guar beans, guar gum can add a notable amount of dietary fiber to any product.

The eighth ingredient is natural flavors. Natural flavors doesn’t give us much information about the particular ingredients included in this dog food for flavoring purposes. 

We’re pleased that the flavorings used are natural, but more details are required to give any further information about these natural flavoring ingredients. Flavorings are used to make the foods more appealing and tasty for our dogs.

The ninth ingredient is carrageenan, a gelatin-like thickening agent extracted from seaweed. Although carrageenan has been used as a food additive for hundreds of years, there appears to be some recent controversy regarding its long-term biological safety. 

The article, The Carrageenan Controversy, published in Scientific American, does a good job of addressing this topic.

From here the list goes on to include a number of other items. But to be realistic, ingredients located this far down the list (other than nutritional supplements) are not likely to affect the overall rating of the product.

This recipe has three notable exceptions.

Firstly, this recipe contains sodium selenite, a controversial form of the mineral selenium. Sodium selenite appears to be nutritionally inferior to the more natural source of selenium found in selenium yeast.

We also note the presence of sodium nitrite, a controversial color preservative. Sodium nitrite has been linked to the production of cancer-causing substances (known as nitrosamines) when meats are exposed to high cooking temperatures.

We are always disappointed to find artificial coloring in any pet food. That’s because coloring is used to make the product more appealing to humans – not your dog. After all, do you really think your dog cares what color their food is?

Nutrient Analysis

Based on its ingredients alone, Hartwick Fields Adult Loaf with Beef in Sauce looks like a below-average, wet product.

The dashboard displays a dry matter protein reading of 44%, a fat level of 19% and an estimated carbohydrate level of 28%.

As a group, the brand features a protein content of 43% and a mean fat level of 20%. Together these figures suggest a carbohydrate content of 30% for the overall product line, alongside a fat-to-protein ratio of 47%.

This means this Hartwick Fields canned range contains above-average protein, above-average carbohydrate, and below-average fat when compared to typical wet dog food.

Hartwick Fields Dog Food Recall History

The following automated list (if present) includes all dog food recalls related to Hartwick Fields through April 2024.

No recalls noted.

You can view a complete list of all dog food recalls since 2009 here.

Our Rating of Hartwick Fields Dog Food

The majority of this product range contains named animal meats in the first few ingredients, which is a real positive. However, meat by-products still feature, alongside added artificial colors and flavors, thus earning this product range only 2 stars.

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Not Recommended

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