I’m not going to help you much. There is not just one breed or type that is perfect. There are a lot of different chickens that would suit you well.
Practically any chicken can handle your weather, but you need to provide a decent coop for most. I haven’t kept chickens in your climate but some people on here I trust have posted that they had some chickens sleep in trees in colder climates that you probably have. Those trees were not on ridge tops with blizzards blowing through but were in protected places. I have seen chickens sleeping in trees where the overnight temperature got below zero Fahrenheit but I suspect your lows can get colder than that.
Chickens in general are a lot hardier than many people want to think. But I think it best for you to provide a coop where they can get out of the wind. With your snow the coop needs to be a bit bigger than normal because they may be in there quite a bit. But there is no real weather reason you can’t pick practically any breed.
Them being red sex links doesn’t really tell me a lot about them. I don’t know which hatchery your
TSC gets their chicks from, but there are two basic types of sex links from hatcheries. One is based on the commercial egg laying chickens. These are not a breed but are hybrids carefully bred to lay a lot of large eggs in the conditions you see in the commercial chicken houses. They are fairly small so they don’t have to use as much of their feed for body maintenance. They are very efficient at converting feed to eggs. They are not great at longevity. The commercial chicken will lay for one or two seasons then is replaced. I’ll get to that later.
The other type of sex links you might get from hatcheries are made from two distinct breeds. Different breeds are used but the chicks can be sexed at hatch because of down color. The hatchery chickens they use to make these chicks are good layers so these hens are generally pretty good layers too. They have bigger bodies so they are not as efficient in converting feed to eggs but they do lay a lot of eggs. These eggs may not be as large as the ones laid by the commercial types, but then they might be. The hatcheries don’t breed these for longevity either but these are generally not as bad as the commercial types at “burning out”.
Each hen is an individual and averages don’t mean much unless you have enough statistically, but with an average hen, she will decrease her productivity somewhere around 15% after every adult molt after the first. Chickens will go through a couple of molts as juveniles. They simply outgrow their feathers and have to replace them. That’s why I said adult molt.
After their first adult molt the eggs get larger but the frequency of lay stays way up there. But after every molt after that the frequency of lay drops on average of about 15%. The eggs get larger too. So how long does an average hen lay for? Several years, but her productivity normally drops off a lot as she gets older.
What this means for the commercial type of red sex links especially is that they start out with a smaller body and laying fairly large eggs to start with. After an adult molt, those eggs get even larger. This leads to more egg laying problems with those larger eggs and smaller bodies. This is not a big problem in the commercial operations because these hens are gone anyway after a couple of seasons, but in the backyard flock it does cause problems. And some people like to feed a protein rich diet which makes the eggs even larger.
This is just one factor though. The hatcheries we buy from don’t breed for longevity so other problems can show up with any of their chickens after a few years, not just the sex links or the commercial sex links. But I think this helps contribute to the reputation of the sex links having problems.
The sex links may not be that bad a choice for you. At least you would know they are pullets. Another choice to assure pullets is to get older chickens, called point of lay (POL). They are more expensive since someone had to buy them feed and take care of them.
For your goals you don’t even need a breed. A barnyard mix would probably fit your needs pretty well. If the flock you get them from are good egg layers, the ones you get should be too. If you find your State thread in the Where am I? Where are you? section you can probably find someone close that can help you out, either with chickens or maybe to split an order.
If you want breeds, you can go to the Henderson Breed Chart and look through it for egg laying, handles confinement well, are not skittish, docile, or whatever traits you want. This does not mean that each and every chicken in that breed will have those traits, but they do tend to follow trends. You can find pretty pictures at Feathersite too.
Henderson’s Breed Chart
http://www.ithaca.edu/staff/jhenderson/chooks/chooks.html
Feathersite
http://www.feathersite.com/Poultry/BRKPoultryPage.html
I doubt I’ve helped you much. In my opinion it’s hard to choose wrong if you do a little research and know what you want to start with. Good luck with it.
