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Wow, thank you all for such a warm welcome! I probably should have mentioned we ordered:

Our rooster will be a Barred Rock, as I have seen/read that they are generally easy-going towards their people. I am hoping he takes good enough care of his ladies to help protect them from some predators, as we regularly see coyotes, fox, hawks, coons, and possums around here, and we would like them to be free range as much as possible. But we also don't particularly want to battle him regularly ourselves. Plus, eventually he's going to be a daddy, and it seems like barred rocks are fairly versatile birds.

For our ladies, we ordered 3 barred rock, 3 australorps, 3 rhode island reds, 3 Hampshires, and 3 silver-lace wyandotte. We figure 'don't put all your eggs in 1 basket' is probs a good rule of thumb for choosing breeds. We would have prefered a few other kinds instead, but we literally decided to get chickens a week ago, so we didn't leave ourselves much prep time. And these seemed to fit with our dual purpose/cold hardy needs. We will see. Now that they are ordered, I find myself having all kinds of second guesses as I am learning more about what exactly we got ourselves into. Haha. Eek! Wish me luck!
 
Kiki said:
1/2-in hardware cloth on your coop will help prevent possum and coon killings. Roosters don't actually fight off predators.
Electric fencing will keep coyotes away.
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Well, darn. So they are just ornery then. Lol. Thats ok. The dogs help with keeping the predators off the property for the most part. Thanks for bursting my little hopeful bubble immediately - less disappointment later. :p

The good news is we have a view of where the coop will go from our office windows during the day. The bad news is that the run butts up against a wooded ridge with lots of mature trees, so its going to be impossible to completely cover the top of the run. The coop is being built into an existing structure where the previous owners kept ducks years ago, but they tore the inside completely apart before they left. Shade and ventilation won't be a problem, but options are limited to prevent predators from coming from above.

Thanks again for your responses.
 
Welcome to BYC! good luck with your chickens. Electric fence works well until you get a snowstorm like we had this past winter. A 6 Ft. drift went over the top of my fence and shorted the whole mess out to ground, no critters got in, but it did take weeks to melt. Hopefully you don't live in Ohio. Thanks for joining.
 
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