Did everything wrong and almost froze my chooks to death

think of myself as a person who plans things well.

Yip. Please crab a chair.

I got my first chickens this spring. All 12 lived in the fruit orchard. Things were splendid, until chickens started disappearing. Two one night, four the next. Hawks were seen and reported. Ouch.The chooks did not appreciate my concern for their security and refused to be moved.

I constructed a sheltered run for them. Then followed a couple of hours running like a mean witch with a raised loop, chasing little dinosaurs intent on not being caught. I am not slim, and my age is 55. Picture me running after cleverly zigzagging birds, stumbling, occasiobally falling and swearing like drunken sailor. I did not catch a single bird.

But the hawks did. I cried my eyes out and tried to call my friends. Nobody was free to join the chase.

So I lost almost the entire herd. Cornered one inexperienced pullet and stuffed her into my sauna. The other one was a tough cookie: for a week, an egg appeared every day and some food disappeared daily. My son decided to sit next to the laying nest, and caught her.

Luckily, the landrace chickens I had ordered a year ago were delivered. My pitiful remains of a flock were absorbed into them and the sun was shining again.

All ideas about a picturesque farm with freely roaming chickens were shelved They had a run with a sturdy net on the roof.

I had planned a combined chicken and lamb house. The foundation was done early. Everything under control. Until...

The foundation blocks were coming from a company that went bust. The next source withdrew on the last minute. My construction engineer boyfriend broke up with me. My engineer father had to withraw as his current wife got hospitalised. The contractor got covid and is currently in ICU.

As if things were not bad enogh, We got unprecedented frosty storms out of season. The harvest froze in the field. And my chickens were still in the open outside run!

I chased all my chickens up from the run and carried them to my sauna [a separate building]. If chickens would not poop like sausage machines, I would have taken them to my living room. But blob here blob there is just impossible.So they colonised the sauna dressing room.

In panic, I crabbed some fallen branches and installed them as roosts. Water, feeder. Ran around collecting grass, hay, weeds, whatever to spread on the floor. The surroundings of the building were slimy with the worst kind of mud, and yes, you guessed it.I need to inform you that having a lardy, well-developed voluptous bottom does not make any landings easier. It hurts, but of course if you happen to fancy colours like blue, violet  and black, it will certainly be an pleasant surprise to undress. Did nothing to my meagre sex appeal, but that might be due to being so edgy that no man in their right mind would have approached me anyway.

Any pompous ideas about being an organised person seem to have been trampled in the mud around the sauna.. ehm I mean the Chicken house.

I am just wondering... the chickens seem really happy in their intermediate quarters. And, actually, so am I. Never used the dressing room anyway.

Sorry you lost so many chickens! That sounds terrible! I had a great horned owl come through a couple times last year, and he discovered a way into one of my chicken coops. It was pretty awful!
Did they have any sort of shelter while they were in the orchard?
How cold do you get there? I live in Wyoming and last year we got down to -45 with windchill. Through all the terrible winter storms and scary cold snaps, I've never actually lost a bird (duck, goose, or chicken) to the cold, and my main coop is certainly not weather proof. The wind always manages to find a way in, and I have to dig my coop out after every snowstorm. I free range my poultry at the moment, and I've had hens decide to stay out during blizzards, trek through the two feet of snow to lay in their favorite nest, and even fly through countless drifts to get to the barn (which is apparently better than their coop, lol). They are way more durable than you think they are.
My only suggestion at the moment would be to see if you can give them some sort of outside run to scratch around in during the day. They like to go outside, so see if you can make that work. Is there a way you can connect their sauna/coop to their orchard run?
Other than that, I think they're fine. You're probably pampering them way more than they need.

The rule for most chickens ("average" can be very misleading when personalities get involved!) is that if you keep them contained in a nice space (like your sauna) for 4-7 days, they'll consider that "home" and be willing to come back there to roost. However, considering the troubles you've had already, I'd totally understand if the only way you're prepared to give them outside run time is with some sort of "chunnel" (a chicken tunnel that leads from roost to run with no means of escape or predation) and some sort of portable run.

Have the flying predators left for the winter? We have Eagle pressure in the spring for longer and longer periods now, but they still leave in the fall for salmon season. We're hearing Ravens again, but they haven't come close now that our flock of geese has expanded, despite still having too many small ducks out during the day. Luckily I've got good moms shepherding them - in fact one of them was set to take on one of those geese who got too close, but I intervened and redirected Mr. Goose to a more polite distance.

Point being, this is a good time to get the chooks cleaning up the veggie garden if you can think of some easy way to use posts and cattle panels that can be moved to a new spot every few days. But if the hawks are still around, you'd need the top fenced as well which is currently still limiting my options. Also your days are getting shorter fast.  

Good luck with whatever you attempt to do.  

Drawing them in to you, with feed (in a bucket, coffee can, or something, with just a little dropped on the ground, to show them what's inside) is much easier than attempting to chase them. It will only take a couple of times, until they'll come right to you, any time they see your bucket in your hand. If you call them, when you have feed for them, they'll start coming when you call, too. Any time I go outside, all my birds take notice, and if I call out, 'Heeeere, chooky-chookunz!!', I get a tidal wave of birds coming to me (both chickens and ducks, and when we had them, turkeys & muskovys). If I raise the bucket so they can see it, and shake it a little, the tidal wave turns into a tsunami of birds. I'm approaching 60, with a similarly described shape, bad knees & ankles (I was too abusive of my body, for too many years - 'extreme' sports are called extreme because... they're extreme! Combined with genetic disabilities,  well, I was just stoopid.), and occasional problems with my hips - Mama doesn't run, lol.

Chickens are amazingly cold tolerant. All things being equal, they can put up with temperatures that are surprising to those of us who prefer things on the warmer end.

There are reasons I left Ohio and moved to Southeast Texas and better food was just one of them.  

As long as your cold temperatures aren't combined with rain, the chickens will be able to adapt. If they are combined with rain, as long as you give the birds someplace they can get out of the wet, they will be okay. Every year I have a few determined chickens that stay too long in damp conditions and end up with frost bite on their combs, but I haven't had a bird loose toes since our very first Bad Freeze back in Spring of 2021 when the Texas power grid failed. It was then I started taking the steps I have improved every year since, but the backbone of my Winter Flock Care is  dry sleeping place, protected from winds. Here, that looks like tarps over a wire fence framework, over a pipe structure. You might need more, or less, depending on whether wind and rain are a part of your typical winter conditions.

As long as your birds have a dry, windproof area, they will manage. Make sure they have wooden roosts and they'll be fine.

I'm sure your flock really enjoys the sauna dressing/changing room they've settled into. It fits all of their needs - they're dry, fed, protected from wind, and they have you bringing them nifty things to eat and play with. Your flock might, currently, be smaller than you'd prefer, but they are definitely well cared for.

I learned early on in my chicken-keeping adventures that I am not as agile, nor as fast over short distances, as a chicken. I don't chase them unless I want to get them moving in random directions, randomly. I wait to collect them until dark, if I know where they roost, or have a net and several boxes that I use if I have to try to catch them during the day.
I did have one wander into the live trap and manage to trap herself, but there are questions about whether that would work again.

It's hard when your good friends get eaten, carried off by something, or die from a random illness. Considering the high turnover in a typical flock, it's better for my long-term emotional health to not have pet chickens.
I have managed to train mine to come when I carry the kitchen slops bucket for kitchen scrap, when I carry a tin pail for their cracked corn ration, and that I am generally associated with random food at random times. They know that "Time to go", accompanied by me waving my Goose Herding Stick means they need to go back inside the fenced yard.

Your flock looks healthy and happy. You should be rightfully proud.

Every year, the local livestock fairs and rodeos have a time period in the evening entertainment where children of certain age groups are invited forward to chase some animal or other - chickens are one of the options, as are sheep, goats, and calves. The contests are called "scrambles" and are very entertaining to watch. The prizes offered, typical for a fair and rodeo around here, are enough to get people past their fear of potential embarrassment. It's just wholesome fun. If anyone asked why I might be chasing a chicken, I would tell them I was practicing for the chicken scramble coming up!

We have the hawk Accipiter gentilis, which hunts all year round. Spring being the worst season as they have their teenagers to feed.
It is protected as an endangered species, although after eating half my flock.I think they might be more in danger of an obesity epidemic

We have several types of raptors, plus coyotes, bobcats, raccoons, opossums, puma, foxes, bears, snakes, and the occasional free-ranging dog(s), that all want our chickens & ducks (&/or their eggs!), so I can definitely empathize with anyone dealing with predator pressure. Our winters get down into the -10°F range in a normal winter, and it has gone much colder, at times, dropping to the -20 to -30°F, in freak cold fronts. As long as the birds have well-ventilated shelter, perches, plenty of food and water, they all seem to do fine, often wandering around, foraging on snow and ice, without seeing affected, at all. They do huddle closer together at night, or in storms, but they handle the cold substantially better than I do.

Kaarina Kreus wrote: We have the hawk Accipiter gentilis, which hunts all year round. Spring being the worst season as they have their teenagers to feed.

 What is its natural prey? Are those in decline? Are there things on your land you can do to support their natural prey without causing other issues?

And said:

It is protected as an endangered species, although after eating half my flock. I think they might be more in danger of an obesity epidemic.

 Obesity might slow them down a little, but more likely their young were more successful and they've got better odds of making it through winter.

We have a surplus of grey squirrels. They've invaded and taken over much of the habitat of the indigenous red squirrel and are considered invasive. So one of my hunting friends have been teaching the local owls to eat squirrel - the problem is the solution! That said, normally the owls don't get my birds, but they have tried for my neighbor's chickens before.

But I get it. Our eagles were endangered, so people helped fix that, and now we've got farmers and farm animals who didn't grow up with eagles as a threat. But humans messed with other parts of the ecosystem as well, making their farm animals an easy, obvious target compared to the prey the eagles used to eat in the spring. (They eat salmon at other times of the year, but not the spring according to a local birder.) As it often is, the problem and the solutions are "complicated"! Hang in there - you've done some creative things on your land to cope with nature already. This is just the next challenge!

Nice looking critters you have, a very diversified flock.Im sorry for your loss of livestock,i hate to see any livestock get taken away by predators,it is their worst nightmare,the whole reason for them running and going crazy when startled. I had gotten some brown leghorns back in spring because of thier heat tolerance.We have some pretty hot and humid summers here.I soon realized they are very flighty and scared of anything over their head.These birds are very alert to any predator especially hawks and falcons and would be a wise addition to any flock as a "watchdog" to warn the more dumbed down breeds.They are still somewhat friendly  also.