Feeding Raw on Vacation

Going on vacation takes some preparation with raw fed pets, whether they are coming with you or staying. With our two dogs and two cats all completely raw fed now it can be a little daunting. It's all about thinking ahead.

Our dogs have always come with us on vacation. A while back I got a big 48 quart cooler. Several days before our vacation I experimented with empty tupperwares to figure out the way they fit best. I also wanted to know how many meals I would be able to bring with me. I suggest using a plastic cooler. Fully loaded my cooler can easily weigh 30-40 lbs with all the meat and ice packs. I'm not sure how much those styrofoam coolers can handle but I'm not taking any chances. I can fit 24 tupperwares in my cooler which is 12 days of food for my dogs. Some of the bigger tupperwares I can even fit 2 meals in one container upping the meal count to about 40. That's almost 3 weeks worth of food, and then I can add chicken leg quarters too. I can fit enough food in one cooler to last a month or more for my dogs. If I leave out a few tupperwares I can fit bigger chunks of meat too. If I used only ziplock baggies I could fit much, much more however I hate wasting the baggies and I don't think I would ever need to bring that much meat anyway.

Think hard about how much meat you actually need to bring, and how much you can bring. If you're going to visit friends or relatives it's good to call ahead and explain that you may need some freezer space for pet food. I've made the mistake of not calling ahead and ended up having more meat than fit in the freezer. Fortunately there was room in the fridge and I didn't have too much extra. Really think about how much you need to bring. Are you going somewhere that you will be able to buy more meat? What will you be able to buy? What will you need to bring? For example it's tough for me to find beef hearts where my inlaws live, but it's easy to find whole chickens or chicken leg quarters so I'd rather put beef heart in the cooler and buy leg quarters there. It's also not a big deal if the dogs don't get beef heart for a couple weeks. They'd do fine eating leg quarters and pork roast or whatever I could find in that town. However, I like bringing as much meat as I will need to last for the vacation. It can be annoying to have to run to the grocery store, butcher meat, and package it while on vacation. I like having it all done and ready to go. As long as there is enough freezer space I will bring enough meat to last the entire vacation plus a couple extra. I bring extra because sometimes the dogs will have a very busy day hiking or swimming and I'll want to give them extra food.

I also take time (months in advance) to ask my friends who hunt if they can keep some parts for me. I have the cooler with me so it's the perfect way to get free meat!

There are some basics of loading a cooler that help keep the meat frozen. First, air is warmer than frozen meat. It's an obvious statement but means a lot here. It means that the more air there is, the warmer the cooler will be; and the more frozen meat or ice there is, the colder it will be. To keep the meat frozen you need to fill as much space as possible. Meat in tupperware will defrost faster than bigger pieces because of all the air in the tupperware. Meat that is frozen solid will actually stay frozen a very long time especially if it is surrounded by other frozen things. If you are going to be traveling for one day and have a freezer available at your destination you can get away with using tupperware in the cooler no problem. There is no reason to worry about the meat defrosting, let alone rotting. More than one day, just makes sure everything stays frozen. Using tupperware is ok but using bigger pieces of meat will help ensure the meat stays frozen. As long as you can keep the meat mostly frozen it will be fine. Our trip from San Diego to my in-laws' house is about 920 miles and takes 14-15 hours. We push through and do it in one day. I load the cooler in the morning right before we leave and when we arrive in Colorado everything is still at least semi-frozen, with things in the middle still completely frozen.

Ice is very important. I use cold packs to slide between the stacks or put on top of the stacks. If I know I am going to have a lot of extra room in the cooler then I fill empty 2 liter soda bottles with water and freeze them. Filling the warm air space with something frozen helps keep the temperature down in the entire cooler. I try to stay away from using bags of ice as they always leak, make a mess, and are not reusable.

Do not load any tupperware sideways and make sure the cooler stays upright. If they start to defrost you could have leakage. Speaking from experience it's not fun to have to clean every single other tupperware, baggie, ice pack, and the cooler itself because one stupid tupperware leaked. Again from experience, anything not in tupperware or ziplock should be wrapped in a plastic grocery bag or put into a ziplock, such as meat wrapped in butcher paper or tubes of ground meat . These always leak if they start to defrost so double bag them.

Finally, don't forget to bring a tarp or mat or whatever your pets eat on. Bring cleaning supplies like a small spray bottle of vinegar too.

Our vacation to Colorado last Christmas was a little more simple as the cats were still being fed kibble and all pets came with us. Our trip this summer was a little more challenging as we decided to leave the cats here and only take the dogs- and the cats are eating raw now. We have wonderful friends who were willing to feed the cats raw. I apologized and thanked them profusely for dealing with the grossness and yuck factor. I wanted to make it as simple and least gross for them as possible.

I decided a mixed up kitty buffet would be easiest for our friends. I got several kinds of meat and organ to use. My original plan was to use the food processor to chop it up really well so it was basically mush. I decided it wasn't worth the time and my gag reflex might not have been able to handle that anyway. I cut everything into chunks and left it at that.

Top row, left to right: Chicken hearts & gizzards, chicken thigh filet, pork shoulder roast
Bottom row, left to right: Moose (it was ground and frozen, I shaved "slices" off as it defrosted), beef kidney, beef liver, and slices of sardines. The dogs ate the heads and tails of the fish.

For bone content I would have liked to have Everest eat a mouse each week and for Zeb to have a chicken wing but I don't think it's reasonable to ask friends or family to give the more "extreme" and intense whole foods like that unless you know for sure they would be ok with it. The cats were with our friends for only 2 weeks and they did get some bone with the sardines. 2 weeks of less bone was not a big deal.

I put it all in a huge salad bowl and mixed it together, then scooped it into tupperware. Mixing it was disgusting, cold, and slimy, but ultimately I felt it was the best way to save our friends from having to do too much. Their willingness to feed raw was enough already! I combined everything the cats needed so all our friends had to do was scoop some out of the tupperware. All tupperwares had the same thing so there was no need to worry about what to feed each meal. Just scoop some out and done.

I also provided a piece of tarp and a box of plastic spoons for them. Raw is gross and I know this. I didn't want to expect them to use their own dishes with it. They chose to use their own plates and utensils anyway.


If you need to board your pets you must call ahead to find out their policy on raw food. Some boarding facilities will not allow raw food. They also might not have the freezer space for raw depending on how long the pets need to stay.


Camping with raw fed pets is another topic entirely, to be covered another day.