Manufacturers population capacities are grossly overestimated.
Unless you want to keep chickens in factory farm type spacing.
Space is about more than how many can 'fit' in there.
There are 3 great reads linked in my signature,
(please let me know if you cannot see or access them)
that all newbies should read.
For 8 birds, in your climate, I would suggest 8x8'.
Winter is brutal and if they can't get out into a weather proofed run,
coop space needs to be larger.
Chicken Cabin Fever is Real.... and it can be Ugly.
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So sorry for you loss. I think most chicken owners have lost birds at one time or another to predators. I know I have. I put electric wire around my coops and pens due to coyotes, bobcat, fox, possums and skunks digging. I put concrete under the gates because of a fox digging under a gate and killing several birds and heavy duty netting over my pens due to hawks and owls and once a coyote jumped over a 5' fence into a pen and killed some birds. There are some places where I dug a trench along the fence a foot deep and put some wire in it and hog ringed it to the bottom of the fence. My electric wire starts about 6" off of the ground and then approximately more wire a foot and then another foot above the first wire. The predators know it's there and won't mess with it. When I first put it up many years ago, initially I heard some predators test it and I guarantee they won't touch it again. Originally we didn't have any electric to our barn but did eventually put in some underground wire and a small panel so we now have electric out there and I have a fence charger plugged into it. So far no predators have penetrated. Here we have mostly coyotes. A few mornings ago a coyote behind some of the coops. It knows the electric wire is there.
