Thanks everyone, it's so hard to lose them. My older daughter and husband sat outside with them tonight until they all went to bed just because we're so worried about them all. My hubby told me he was freezing his butt off and wanted to murder a few of them because they wouldn't go to bed and stay there. We're going to be moving everyone to their new coop this weekend with a covered run. We'll also start figuring out how to cover the old run with something that can handle heavy snow. The new coop's run is longer but skinnier, so the top will be better supported.
We do have geese with our chickens, three big embdens, one male, one female, one we can't tell because all of it's features are smack dab in the middle of the other two who are obvious. We'll see in the spring when mating season gets here. We think they are the reason we haven't had a problem til now because we have no shortage of hawks out here. They were probably just on the other side of the coop in their favorite spots when it happened.
My geese were really easy to raise from babies (messy as can be though). I brooded them next to the chickens so they could all see eachother, and then when the geese were big enough (about the time I couldn't carry all three anymore) they got to free range with the chickens. Then when we got their hut in the run done, they moved out to the run with the chickens. We're going to try letting them live in the big coop with all the girls, but we're not sure it's going to work because they're so messy. They see me as mama and will come when called. They see themselves as mama to the chickens even though most of my chickens are older than them. They are VERY protective of their chickens. They attacked my dog anyime he was out(small/medium), went after a neighborhood cat(large), and any strange people in the yard. We can take people into the run with us and they behave, but people can't just go into the run. If the geese are free-ranging strangers are not safe. They also acclimate to strange chickens slowly. With the meaties, we had to free range them together for quite some time before they would tolerate a meatie in their yard let alone their run. They make a heck of a lot of noise any time there is something in our yard that doesnt belong (deer, rabbits too close, cats, dogs, people, trash). They track every moving thing in the sky and if it's a big pigeon flying too low they'll make a ruckus. They don't alert on airplanes or little robins anymore, and I've watched them watch hawks that were really high in the sky. Those hawks never came near though.
All that being said I have never seen them deal with a predator. If anything I think they've been more of a deterrent than a protector just due to their size. I think we're going to hatch some out in the spring so we can have some geese in both runs.
