Kal Kan

Kal Kan Information

Kal Kan is an extremely old dog food brand that has been in operation since 1936. Back then, Kal Kan sold dog food made from horse meat.

Some of you may recognize the brand from Back to the Future, where doc fed Einstein, his dog, Kal Kan wet dog food with an automated dog feeder machine.

Kal Kan is now owned by Mars Petcare which also owns other well-known brands like Crave, Royal Canin, Pedigree, Iams, Eukanuba, and more.

Most of the Kal Kan brand was transformed by Mars into the Pedigree brand, but a small brand remained under the Kal Kan name.

We found a slightly odd website for the Kal Kan brand with just a single product page. We aren’t sure if this was missed by Mars, but similar variations all re-direct to Mars.

While Kal Kan produces a very limited number of products themselves, they help develop and formulate products for many of the other Mars Petcare brands.

This development and formulation takes place at their Waltham Center, which is in Nevada, USA.

For those of you looking to get ahold of Kal Kan dog food, it is most commonly found on the shelves of large retail stores like Walmart or KMart.

However, Kal Kan is not found on many of the large pet food websites like Chewy or Petflow but has sometimes been seen on Amazon and others.

Kal Kan Product Range

Kal Kan produces only a single dog food recipe which gives it the smallest product range we have found to date.

This dog food recipe is a dry dog food recipe designed for adult dogs. Based on this, Kal Kan does not produce any puppy food or wet/canned dog food.

Kal Kan Nutrition

Sadly, the nutrition offered by Kal Kan’s single dry dog food recipe is not impressive and is significantly below average when compared to other dog food brands.

This below-average nutritional profile consists of below-average proportions of protein and fat and an excessive proportion of carbohydrates.

You can see this nutritional profile below.

As you can see, almost 60% of the recipe’s calorie content is from carbohydrates which is a huge sum.

If you would like to learn more about canine nutrition, we highly recommend you check out our Dog Food Guide.

Kal Kan Ingredients

High-Quality Meat & Fish Ingredients

• Chicken

Given that Kal Kan only has a single dog food recipe, its variety of meat ingredients is extremely limited.

They make use of Chicken By-Product Meal in their recipe, which is a mixture of less desirable meat cuts from Chicken that is ground up together.

While this ingredient may not be very appetizing to humans, it can provide dogs with valuable nutrition in the form of protein and fat.

Other Notable Ingredients

Sadly, Kal Kan also utilizes a large portion of Meat and Bone Meal in their recipe. This is an unnamed meat ingredient that is a controversial topic and is usually categorized as a low-quality ingredient.

This isn’t because it can not provide nutrition but because it is not accountable or transparent. Kal Kan could alter their recipe significantly, and consumers would not be aware of or notice any difference in the ingredient list.

There are a large number of grain ingredients present in Kal Kan’s recipe, including Ground Corn, Soybean Meal, Ground Wheat, Wheat Middlings, and Corn Gluten Meal.

Grain ingredients such as these are controversial additions to pet food recipes, with many pet owners refusing to feed their pets grain-inclusive food.

However, there are also strong supporters of grain ingredients, especially among those who feed Purina or Royal Canin.

Regardless, these grain ingredients will act as a dense source of carbohydrates in addition to some plant-based protein, fiber, and other nutrients.

Animal Fat is another unnamed meat ingredient found in Kal Kan. Once again, while Animal Fat is certain to provide some valuable nutrition, it is not transparent, and its source is not clear.

Named animal fat ingredients such as Chicken Fat or Beef Fat would be preferred to this. You can read more about the widespread use of Chicken Fat in dog food in our article Chicken Fat In Dog Food.

Kal Kan Animal Testing

At this time, we have limited information on what type of testing that Kal Kan participates in and whether any of this is invasive or laboratory style.

We strongly believe that invasive or laboratory testing of animals in the pet food industry is a cruel and outdated practice and one which we hope will see a significant decline.

Kal Kan Recalls

Based on our research (FDA, AVMA, DogFoodAdvisor), Kal Kan is a recall-free brand and has never had to recall any of its products or issued a recall voluntarily.

Given that Kal Kan is a longstanding brand, this is an impressive record and shows that they take the safety and quality aspects of their production process seriously.

However, given that Kal Kan as a brand is far smaller than it was in the past, this record may not be as impressive or notable as other larger brands.

Despite this, we always encourage dog owners to be vigilant of any future recalls from Kal Kan or any other dog food brand to ensure their dogs remain healthy and safe.

Best of Kal Kan

Complete Adult Review

Given that Kal Kan only has a single recipe available, we didn’t have much choice in our selection of the best recipe available.

The above Complete Adult’s primary meat ingredients are Meat and Bone Meal and Chicken By-Product Meal. This combination of ingredients provides a small proportion of protein and fat.

Outside of these meat ingredients, the recipe includes a large portion of Corn, Soybean, and Wheat.

These grain ingredients provide a reliable mix of nutrition in the form of carbohydrates, plant-based protein, and fiber.

Kal Kan Featured Articles

The 11 Worst Dog Foods – Given some of the information listed above, it may not come as a surprise that Kal Kan featured in our article highlighting some of the worst dog food brands.

In this article, we discuss traits like ingredient quality, nutrition, and recall records to justify our choices.

Full Kal Kan Product Range

Dry Dog Food

Complete Adult