With the increasing amount of scientific literature supporting the effectiveness of CBD for helping Great Danes, more and more companies are popping up with their own CBD products. As a pet owner, the hard question now boils down to how to pick a CBD company to trust!
In this article, I’ll be reviewing the King Kalm CBD for Great Danes. I specifically chose this particular product because, at the time of writing this article, this is the ONLY product on the market that is specifically dosed for our gentle giants.
While I’m sure that will change in the future, this seemed like the most appropriate product to do a dedicated review for at this time.
To get the boring yet necessary legal stuff out of the way, I would also like to note that I was not paid by King Kanine to write this review, nor were they allowed to have any input on its content.
What goes into making king kalm CBD for Great Danes?
Whether it’s something for myself or my dog, the first thing I look into is the quality with which it’s made!
Everything from the ingredients themselves to the manufacturing process, and where it’s made and how it’s quality is verified.
Last but not least, an element of social proof is always a good sign. The likelihood of me being a happy customer goes up when there are many that have come before me 😉
With that, let’s take a look at each of these items in detail.
Review Table of Contents
King Kanine Source Ingredients
Quality ingredients are often one of the most important make-or-break factors for supplements. Knowing that our Great Danes will be consuming this particular product, it’s important to know where it comes from!
King Kanine’s products are sourced from naturally occurring hemp and has zero added artificial ingredients, flavors, preservatives, or coloring agents.
Knowing that we’ve got wholesome, unadulterated ingredients to begin with, let’s see where King Kanine takes it from here!
Now because many are wary of CBD products due to their association with cannabis, the first thing that I’ll point out is that King Kanine’s is a broad spectrum CBD product.
Since this may sound like pure marketing jargon, let’s do a quick debrief on what the different types of CBD products are.
The Case for Full Spectrum vs Broad Spectrum vs CBD Isolates
- Full spectrum CBD: Contain all cannabinoids including CBD and THC up to 0.3%.
- Broad spectrum CBD: Contain CBD, other cannabinoids and terpenes, but no THC.
- CBD Isolates: Contain only CBD and no other cannabinoids or terpenes.
Note: There are over 100 different cannabinoids; of which the two best-studied are tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and cannabidiol (CBD).
Looking at these descriptions it’s clear that CBD isolates are the “purest”. In fact, they have to be 99+% pure to be considered an isolate.
However, what’s interesting to learn is that studies have found that CBD works best in synergy with the other components found in cannabis. This is often referred to as the “entourage effect” (more detail on that here if you’re interested).
To get to the point – broad spectrum products provide the maximum benefit without including THC.
To be fair, the 0.3% or less THC found in full spectrum products is too low to cause intoxicating effects. However, using broad spectrum products still seems like a safe approach if you’re trying to avoid THC.
CBD Extraction Method
Now that you’ve got a good understanding of the “types” of CBD oils, it’s also worth looking into how these products are made.
Because hemp contains CBD and other helpful cannabinoids with very little THC, it’s most commonly used as the source. The approach to “extracting” the CBD and other helpful compounds from the hemp is where companies often differ.
Three of the most common extraction methods include:
- Carbon dioxide (CO2) – Pressurized carbon dioxide is pushed through the hemp to draw out compounds.
- Liquid solvents – The hemp is saturated in solvents such as ethanol or isopropyl alcohol and then filtered off to extract the compounds.
- Oil infusion – The hemp is soaked in vegetable oil and heated to extract the material.
All of these methods are effective at extracting CBD, but the CO2 and liquid solvent approaches tend to be more efficient and don’t result in large volumes of residual oil.
Because of their cheaper manufacturing cost, liquid solvents are the most common form of CBD extraction worldwide. But this does come at a cost!
When not executed perfectly, there is the potential for residual solvents to be left in the product. It can also lead to the extraction of chlorophyll and give the product a bitter taste.
Compared to the others, CO2 extraction is the most expensive of the three approaches due to the need for specialized equipment and higher energy requirements.
However, this approach results in a clean and high-quality product for us to consume! From a buyer’s perspective, if you want the best product, opt for one that’s made using a CO2 extraction.
Point goes to King Kanine here for exclusively using CO2 extraction methods for their products!
Manufacturing Facilities
We’ve now stepped through what King Kanine’s product is made from and how it’s made, let’s move onto see where it’s made!
While it’s certainly possible to do these types of extractions in many labs, quality control is a serious issue for many companies. For this reason, it’s important to see that the manufacturing facilities are properly certified.
Looking into King Kanine, I was pleasantly surprised to see the level of due diligence that they’ve performed in this area!
Now, I say that because CBD has taken on a bit of a “gold rush” mentality. With loosening regulations, it seems as if companies are popping up left and right to take advantage of CBD’s growing popularity.
Companies that do not take careful time and preparation to set up their facilities and implement good manufacturing practices are bound to have problems with product quality.
By comparison, all of King Kanine’s locations are GMP Certified, ISO-9001 Certified FDA registered facilities.
Let’s unpack that statement a little bit…
The acronym stands for Good Manufacturing Practices, and to be GMP certified means that the manufacturer has demonstrated a strong regulatory commitment and compliance to international GMP standards.
Wellspring Pharma Services
ISO stands for International Standards Organization, indicating that these are worldwide standards. The specific 9001 standard details specifics around the quality management system. Organizations use the standard to demonstrate the ability to consistently provide products and services that meet customer and regulatory requirements.
That sounds like a mouthful – and it kind of is!
But the good news for you is that it means that King Kanine has spent a lot of time in resources building and certifying high-quality manufacturing facilities.
When it comes to being able to trust products that you’re feeding to your Great Dane, this is a good thing!
Independent Laboratory Testing
Now if that wasn’t enough, let’s take it one final step further! And the best way to do that is with independent laboratory testing.
While it’s completely reasonable for companies to do in-house testing, using independent third parties is the best way to remove conflicts of interest.
This ensures that tests or results aren’t being flubbed due to internal conflict, or desire to avoid hurting your company.
Not only does King Kanine have independent testing performed, they even post it directly on their website! You can find the latest results for the King Kalm 600mg CBD product here.
The important things to call out from this test include:
- Accuracy of CBD dosing
- Lack of residual solvents
- Lack of pesticides
Now because this formula is specifically dosed with 600mg of CBD, we should expect to see a number close to that!
Lucky for us,
While this may sound like a minor point, you’d be amazed at how many products on the market are way far off their marketed values.
This causes issues for several reasons:
- Under-dosed products could result in your dog not getting the intended amount and therefore not seeing the expected benefits
- An under-dosed product is the equivalent of over-charging you as the customer
- Over-dosed products could result in unintended benefits due to receiving too much CBD to elicit the intended therapeutic effects
It’s clear that dog’s as large as Great Danes will need more CBD than an average or small dog. So by purchasing a formula in advance that’s properly targeted and dosed for dogs of their stature you’re doing yourself (and your wallet) a favor 😉
Moving on to the solvent portion of the analysis, we should expect these results to come back as “not found” given the CO2 extraction methods were used. Once again King Kanine gets a perfect score here as all residual solvent tests failed to detect any compounds.
Pesticide testing is extremely valuable because it not only confirms that the company is not using the substance, but also ensures that their grow sites aren’t cross-contaminated from nearby sources.
As you might expect at this point, the pesticide tests for King Kanine indicated that there were “None Detected” for over 60 individual pesticides!
Social Proof
If you’ve read this far, then one thing you may be wondering is how well the product actually worked! That’s where social proof comes to the rescue 😉
Now while this may seem strange to have left it for the end, I intentionally saved it for last for several reasons.
Number one, unless you’ve taken the time to review what’s in a product and how it’s made, I don’t think uninformed experimentation with supplements is a good idea…
Secondly, while CBD studies have shown a lot of promise and positive evidence, they’re far from done. We still have a LOT to learn about these compounds as they apply to both canines and humans.
Because of these knowledge gaps, I think it’s fair to say that everyone’s experience may differ. So it’s best to evaluate the product, the company, and your own situation to determine if trying a product is right for you.
Even with that in mind, I was amazed at just how many reviews there are of King Kanine’s products.
I know just how hard it can be to a couple of reviews, and yet they’ve got over 1,600 reviews on the King Kanine site! Averaging out with almost a perfect score, there’s clearly some good stuff happening here 🙂
That being said, I’ll close this one out in saying that this King Kalm Great Dane formula (link to their website) is one that we have personally used and found to have positive results.