Could This Be the BEST Portable Chicken Coop Our Honest Review

This might just be the best coop ever. Today we're going to talk about the IllumiCoop. These guys gave me one to try out so that I could share it with you guys. We're going to check it out and see how it holds up to all the other coops that I've tried over the years. So I've got a new mobile coop to check out with you today but I wanted to do a little bit of review of some of the coops we've worked with over the years and these are both like chicken tractors for meat chickens and mobile coops for layers. They can be either or. The key here is mobility and what is the best coop. What's the best thing for you to use and I want to start off by talking about what is best. Best is like super subjective right. What's best for me may not be best for you. One person might want the heaviest duty you know rock solid thing no maintenance they can ever get and they don't mind that it costs a whole bunch. Another person might want something that just slap together make it as inexpensive as possible and that works great for them. One person needs something super light that's easy to get around rough terrain and they don't mind having netting. Another person needs a totally enclosed coop to keep the animals in. So there's a lot of variations of mobile coops. I'm going to take you some of the things we've done over the last 20 years and end looking at that Illuma coop which is kind of the maybe one of the newest greatest best things and it's worth taking a look at so we'll check it out. I started with mobile coops with the Salatin style 10 by 12. Super manageable coop super easy to build lightweight low cost really really great and that was a great coop for us for a lot of years but when we moved up here to north Idaho and the land that we were on it did not move well across the landscape it just was very very difficult to move and then there were some challenges with storing it during the winter because of the heavy snow load we get here where we get a lot of snow but then we also get a lot of rain and then it freezes gets super heavy so we were having a lot of challenges with that style coop. So I just want to start there that's kind of the foundation when we talk about mobile chicken coops is the Salatin style it's a great coop and it might be a great coop for you it just hasn't worked well for us in a lot of the land that we've had so I started experimenting and looking at other options. Somewhere along the way I came up with this what I call Idaho A-frame which is a standard 10 by 12 base but I wanted something that I wasn't concerned about weight I wanted to move wanted it to move still but I was mostly concerned about snow load and being able to walk into it. We were having things just collapse under the snow I didn't want to have to disassemble it every season or several of them so we built this A-frame kind of the if you're familiar with the John Suskovich model which is a walk-in more with cattle panels or pipes and a tarp over it but again I wanted something more rugged than the tarps in this case I wanted a solid metal roof so we built this thing I don't know like six years ago built several of these and they worked pretty good but they still had the problem of moving on the land they solved the snow load problem once I figured out how to engineer them so I could park them be done with it let them go through winter come right back out and use them we could also walk into them so they worked well both for broilers and if we wanted to put layers in here they work great for that they work great for turkeys good coop but pretty heavy and still hard to move across the land so I kept on looking for solutions now if any of you guys have followed Justin Rhodes he kind of pioneered the chickshaw which started with some with egg layers and we've got one over here one of the first ones I built modeled off of Justin's chickshaw idea and that was a fantastic idea that all of a sudden got you up off the ground it's easy to move it moves across different terrain hillsides and really really good and then the chickens could still sleep inside at night and have some protection however you still needed a netted area for them that's been a great coop and that kind of evolved and I want to give Justin the credit because I think he took from that idea then the kind of mobile shod kind of the rolling shelter which has become something for us that has worked really really well I've now modified it to work with chickens turkeys pigs and sheep for all those situations super good mobile situation let's go take a look at that so this is the meatshaw concept and this is my all-around favorite and most utilitarian vehicle for for mobile coops and then on to even mobile animal shelters but we're talking mostly about mobile coops today this thing is great it's lightweight we could even make it a little bit lighter if we turn some of the material into one by you can adjust the height this one's a little tall for chickens but it works well it's super easy to move around we can get it around our you know rolling and hilly terrain and sometimes rough and even kind of rocky doesn't cost very much to build it's super easy you pick up the feeders put them on the roof we even have we have two two waters here we've even got you can have a water bucket right here just hanging on with a handle when you move it in the morning the water is usually pretty low so it's light we've even built in a water to the back here and it all moves together so we're still working on refining this so that we can just pick it up and go this is my favorite system all the way around it's it's pretty foolproof it doesn't cost a lot and it will move around just about any terrain the one downside is that it's not enclosed it's not like a Salatin style or a Suscovich style where your chickens are enclosed so the upside to that is is they get a little more room to free range the downside is they might burn a few more calories so it might take you a little bit more feed and you don't have the same predator protection this works for us we've got electric netting out here we've got dogs we just don't have any predator problems so this works great if you had high aerial predator problems I would get geese the geese are great but you might need an enclosed style so that's the one downside to this but otherwise this is like my top pick for mobile coop this works great I'm starting to look at experimenting something like this for layers we haven't done that yet but how can we turn this into a layer situation for layers being out on the pasture as well just a little bit lighter and easier to move in and out of than say a chickshaw so my top favorite pick out of any of the mobile coops so far you know there's a lot of DIY solutions but with the popularity of mobile chicken coops there are some folks that have keyed into the market and have started to provide a pre-manufactured solution and they've got some pros and cons to them this is one that we got from happy farmer last year there's a video on that you can check that out if you want as a full review on this it's a good coop it's all aluminum this thing's going to last forever we're obviously not using it right now so it's sitting in the grass and we don't have the canvas tarp on it there's no point to have it getting weathered just sitting here but if you were to take the canvas top off of this thing every year and put it away for winter this thing will last forever if you take care of it it's a nice solid coop it's all enclosed there's good protection your predators aren't going to generally get through this wire unless it was a big predator that really wanted in it's got nice roosts in it you can hang your feeders your waters you can do this for broilers or we had layers in it so there's nest boxes in there really really nice pre-made coop pretty cool problem is it's expensive if you want a pre-made assemble it yourself solution where you don't have to figure out the plans and know how to work with wood and then have some of the deterioration wood is going to break down a little bit this isn't going to break down if you don't beat it up or run it over or you know anything like that it's going to hold up for a long time and so we ran this all last year it's a good coop it's more expensive of a coop than i'm going to probably buy but it's also maintenance free and going to last if you take care of it i've talked about 20 30 years i probably forever it's just aluminum it's not going to rust it's not going to come apart the one challenge with it it's a 10 by 12 which is kind of your standard size for broilers and it's a little hard to move i've got a decent little idea here on a lever for bringing the wheel up so this was a nice iteration not bad you do kind of have to lift the whole weight of the thing but that allows you to then pick it up they've got a handle on the door you can pick it up and move it it's a little grasped in so it's heavier it's not as heavy as it looks like it is right here the one challenge with this handle it's a little close things right on your heels there's no room to walk it's got some ergonomic challenges though it works pretty well it's a good coop you can see a full review on it has a few ergonomic challenges and it's just expensive okay and then we have the ilumi coop this thing is the cadillac of all mobile coops that i've seen so far it's pretty amazing a little bit of disclaimer i did not pay for this they gave this to us for us to check it out and review it so we'll talk about price in a few minutes i thought the other aluminum coop when i got it was pretty cool this is a step up it's a really good coop it's got the things we just talked about and the other one it's got a solid aluminum frame it's a 10 by 12 they make them in all kinds of different sizes and heights so there's a lot of different options so this is a 10 by 12 it's kind of made to use for egg layers so you could run broilers in here we're running turkeys through here right now working great got this nice they call it canvas i mean it's kind of a modern canvas it's a little plasticky works great you just want to take it off when it's not in use so that it so that it lasts longer and so just a solid frame but it's got some features about it that make this much much more usable so i just want to show you first the movability they made something really really nice as far as engaging the wheels and getting this thing moved i've got a handle that stays out of the way when the wheels are disengaged so that you can get in and out of the door it's got a nice latch even give it a little wire so you can open it from the inside in case you lock yourself in but then this handle and you just lift it up like that it engages the wheels it's out far enough that your heels don't get bumped pick it up and you move i've already moved it today so i'm not going to go very far and it just moves right back out of the way that is a really really nice feature it makes it really really easy to move i will say this one at this size is a little heavy not a problem for me to move it or for the adults but if you have somebody younger or smaller it's it is a little hefty now but they make different sizes on this so this is like one of the biggest ones so a little bit weighty but really really nice to move even though it's a 10 by 12 the wheels come up high enough that it's moving pretty good along our terrain that's not as smooth as some places it's not as nice as the mobile shaw style which still remains my favorite but this is the easiest one to move out of any of them that i've worked so they thought of some nice little details they gave you a little clip right here to hang your feeders from you can adjust the height on this you can move it around really simple it's just really thoughtful and the details there you know their feeders got a nice little rope it's really easy to adjust it hangs so you can put this anywhere you want to this is robust enough to hold the weight of the feed nice feeder system comes with it they've got a great water system as well they've got a built-in tank probably adds to the weight a little bit we try to move it when the water is empty but that feeds in and it has a little feeder right here again nice little clips you can adjust the height you can move this around this distributes water as needed very very nice system i mean they've this is why i say it's a cadillac they really thought about the details here we're using this for turkeys we probably could have a few roosts in here but we don't the turkeys are they're out most of the time they kind of come in here to eat and drink and get out of the sun when they need it but this works great as a mobile laying coop you can see right here they've got some canvas on the back so there's a little bit of we've got canvas on the sides you can drop it down prevent provide a little wind protection a little a little more shelter but they've got a laying box that goes in here where you can collect the eggs from the outside so that's already all built in very very nice we just don't have it set up because we're not running layers through here maybe next year and then it also comes with some wood roosts that distribute in here as well so they've really really thought of all the details one last additional detail really really cool you might be wondering what these little legs are sticking out they have built this so that you can create an electrified perimeter around it for people that have heavier predator pressure this is great for anything that's going to try to come into the side super heavy duty but you still get animals sometimes that come and try to dig in and get underneath things they've got some trays that can carry a battery you can mount some solar panels on here and and then you can mount some wire to this they've got some mount things that connect onto this and then you can run a perimeter wire around it so if you don't have the fencing if you're out in the open you've got predator problems that little single electric wire will keep those predators just away from the coop altogether so that's a really really nice feature as you see this is truly like the Cadillac of mobile coops it's very durable it's very functionable they've thought about all the details it's ready to go i mean you gotta it's gonna come in pieces and you gotta assemble it but they've got good directions and you put it together yourself this thing's gonna last long long time super easy to use this one's a little heavy so you need a little strength to move it however they do make different sizes the major downside is the cost you know it's just expensive to create something like this i don't fault a lumie coop for it it just it takes what it takes to build something like this and to create a ready-made solution but for those of you that are looking for a ready-made solution something that solves all the little problems that people have with mobile coops and don't mind the cost this is an amazing coop really really like it we're going to use it we're going to keep this one moving we're also going to keep our our our mobile shaws moving as well that's going to be our go-to standard but very very thankful for this i want to thank bud miller who got one of these into our hands and aluma coop has offered you guys five percent off of any of these coops through the end of 2024 so we get no benefit from that we don't get a cut of that there's no affiliate relationship i just went to them and said hey these things are expensive can you help us out at all and so for if this is something that interests you uh check the link below and go over to the blog post and we'll have some contact info for you to go check them out go call bud and see if there's a solution that works for you so great great coop love it gonna use it if it works for you check it out