I agree - I don't think they'll make it through the winter, either, but what can you do? Your hubby helped her with her coop, and after that, what else is there? About all you can do is keep your gate shut to keep them away from your flock and hope that when their time comes it's swift and relatively painless instead of freezing or starving to death. And pray really hard that she has no desire to replace them once they're gone. I think keeping your gate shut is good for another reason, too. If they did have the opportunity to adopt your flock as their own, and she looked out window and saw them with your flock, you'd surely be accused of stealing them.Yesterday, we were leaving and while on the main road out of our little area, we were forced to stop for her two pullets in the road, who are obviously headed from her property to the undeveloped woods across the street from her. I'm betting some other folks who don't feel the same way about chickens as we do might target those poor little pullets with their vehicles. Then, later my DH saw them pecking in the grass of the neighbor on the other side of me-our three properties sort of meet up in the pointy end of a pie wedge at one location-well, those two do and mine is backed off up into the wedge a bit, hard to describe, really. So, she isn't keeping tabs on those birds, not at all, just like she said she didn't.
Between us and that other down the mountain neighbor is a barely discernible road, overgrown with grass, more like a leafy tunnel than a road, and it's predator highway. In fact, years ago we smoked out a fox's den in the pipe going under the road, which was about 225' from my main coop. She accused us of killing the fox to every person she spoke to for years, probably still is. Well, it was on my property, my fox, dang it, but no, we did not shoot the mama fox she was FEEDING. A fox will come out of that leafy tunnel of a road and snatch one of those pretty, friendly little pullets and she'll have no idea what happened to it. I'm sure I'll get the phone call. I still don't think they'll last through this winter.