Hi everyone,

It's been awhile since I've been on here but originally joined when I got my first Husky, Aurora. She is now 5 1/2 and we are having the best time of our lives. I raised her in Alaska but we currently reside in Oregon mountain biking, snowboarding, climbing, SUP, everything! She also does Amazing off-leash and it's been such a fun journey.

She's been on a raw diet since she was 8 weeks old (Darwins raw food). It's worked out great and super convenient. I've had zero complaints.

However, I'm considering hitting the road for 6 months or so living the RV life but sadly this would mean no more raw food just due to uncertainty of what is available where and also not knowing if I'll be able to keep a freezer powered constantly throughout the journey.

So, with that being said, looking for opinions on the next best thing that wouldn't need to be frozen or refrigerated. Once we actually hit the road and we get a feel for things I'd love to try to re-introduce a partial raw diet again (I'm a big fan) if I feel I can keep it refrigerated. (I'll be building a sweet solar setup)

This was actually a hard decision as I've loved having her on a raw diet her whole life. But I need to plan for worst case scenario which would be if I didn't have a fridge for a week here and a week there etc. I also enjoy telling people she only eats raw food

Thank you all!

Mine did well on the orijens freeze dried patties. They are fully balanced rather than a premix and come in a pattie so you can either feed them straight to her or you can break them up and rehydrate them. It takes a while to rehydrate any of the patty type freeze dried foods. Warm water will speed things up a little. Vital Essentials also has a freeze dried patty that I've had good luck with. They seem to rehydrate a bit faster than the orijens and aren't quite as pricey but I have an allergy dog and had a little harder time getting flavors he could eat. Grandma Lucy's makes some completes that are super easy to rehydrate but they really need to be rehydrated so you lose the eat-them-dry-on-the-trail option with them. I feed raw with the grandma lucy's premix all the time so with those you could always transition over to the premix and see how she does before going over to the completes where you don't have to add your own meat. It just depends how you will need the food to function. A lot of people love The Honest Kitchen and I think it and Sojos is a little more wallet friendly. I've just had the best luck dealing with dogs who have allergies with Orijen and Grandma Lucy's.

So me and 3 of the 4 dogs did the rv life for a few years and my shepherd has food allergies and so i had him on whole rabbits. I would advise a straight propane fridge/freezer. The one in our fifth wheel could run off propane or electric but it required the battery so if battery dies fridge goes out. I miss the rv life but damn it was a bitch with 3 dogs and horse

TwisterII wrote:

Mine did well on the orijens freeze dried patties. They are fully balanced rather than a premix and come in a pattie so you can either feed them straight to her or you can break them up and rehydrate them. It takes a while to rehydrate any of the patty type freeze dried foods. Warm water will speed things up a little. Vital Essentials also has a freeze dried patty that I've had good luck with. They seem to rehydrate a bit faster than the orijens and aren't quite as pricey but I have an allergy dog and had a little harder time getting flavors he could eat. Grandma Lucy's makes some completes that are super easy to rehydrate but they really need to be rehydrated so you lose the eat-them-dry-on-the-trail option with them. I feed raw with the grandma lucy's premix all the time so with those you could always transition over to the premix and see how she does before going over to the completes where you don't have to add your own meat. It just depends how you will need the food to function. A lot of people love The Honest Kitchen and I think it and Sojos is a little more wallet friendly. I've just had the best luck dealing with dogs who have allergies with Orijen and Grandma Lucy's.

Thanks! Yeah I was curious about freeze-dried but haven't looked into that much yet. What's your definition of "it takes awhile" to rehydrate them. I could be open to that depending Luckily water wouldn't be an issue and I would have an ample supply of that at all times.

Luckily as of today there are no known allergies and Aurora has had a little bit of everything! She also catches plenty of prey from squirrels to birds to bunnies. But I can't bank on her always catching her own food in all areas haha.

She eats twice a day right now, morning and afternoon, and she eats exactly 1lb of raw Darwins meals per day. I think I'm currently spending about $90 every 3 weeks or so, so if I'm in that range cost-wise I'd be OK with that.

I'm not familiar with any of those brands so I will definitely look into all of them! Thank you!

Lostmaniac wrote:

So me and 3 of the 4 dogs did the rv life for a few years and my shepherd has food allergies and so i had him on whole rabbits.  I would advise a straight propane fridge/freezer. The one in our fifth wheel could run off propane or electric but it required the battery so if battery dies fridge goes out. I miss the rv life but damn it was a bitch with 3 dogs and horse

Thanks for chiming in! Good to have some input from someone in a similar situation. Although, I just have one crazy animal to deal with She's actually really great.

I have looked into propane fridge/freezer as well, this would obviously ensure a somewhat more stable supply to keep it going as long as you don't run out of propane. However, my current test calculations just might allow me to keep some energy efficient fridges running solely on solar, even through the night. I would also have a generator that automatically kicks in if battery voltage drops too low to re-charge the batteries. Since I haven't built the system yet it's all hypothetical but the system should be pretty robust. It'll be at least 4 months until I'm truly ready to implement that scenario though.

Solar is a funny thing when you start getting into sine and modified sine and pure sine. Like space heaters can only run on pure sine. I am super addicted to coffee and that puts alot of strain on a system. We ended up running normal stuff off a generator amd the lights fridge and water pump ran off the battery and the generator charged the batteries. They make some really cool solar generators now and some that use turbines.

Ive been looking into solar/wind again but for the house and with all the appliances it needs a big system. So our local electric co op raised rates by 71% this year. Because its a co op its not regulated. Solar is expensive but worth looking into again. Half my house runs off propane but i may need to start shutting off my grow lights. But we did the off grid math and i think solar was a little cheaper then wind turbines although turbines are fairly easy to build. Gsa sometimes has solar stuff that is military grade, we bought a few high output panels from the air force. Stuff like solar they upgrade every few years... govt waste but good if your looking for stuff.

Side note about gsa they also sell vehicles and helicopters and tanks

FirstAscent wrote:

Thanks! Yeah I was curious about freeze-dried but haven't looked into that much yet. What's your definition of "it takes awhile" to rehydrate them. I could be open to that depending Luckily water wouldn't be an issue and I would have an ample supply of that at all times.

The patties not broken up will pretty much never rehydrate all the way through. You could put them in a bowl of water and leave them overnight and they wouldn't be completely soaked through to the middle. If you break them up and stir often they can be decently rehydrated in around 10 minutes. 5 minutes with warm water and you really work at stirring and breaking it down in small sections. Something like Grandma Lucy's will rehydrate in in just a couple minutes with no help. And it smells devine. lol. Grandma Lucy's will probably run you around the same in costs. If you are feeding 3 cups of GL a day a 10 pound bag at $75 will last around 2 weeks. 3.75ish cups a day is the super active feeding rate for 50 pound dog. Vital Essentials has gotten kinda proud of their patties lately and may outrun your darwins cost. Their beef formula is $50/bag and at their feeding rate that's only a week. Orijen may do the same. Watch Chewy.com for sales on The Honest Kitchen. I see it pop up on sale more often than other freeze dried foods and you can get it pretty reasonably, often cheaper than GL if on sale.