Tree Fodder Free Poultry & Livestock Food Traditional Forages and their History
'Air meadows' is the beautiful description for a multi millennial old tradition of feeding European livestock. How do we know this? Well because in this form of silviculture, the standard way of growing trees for an optimum harvest was to pollard them and thus create a yearly plethora of thickly growing, thin leafy branches above browse height. Evidence of whole stands of trees pruned this way have been discovered dating from the Neolithic Period all over the continent and there still exist examples of ancient pollarded trees in parks common land and pre-Enclose Act hedgerows. It is very interesting to note that up until the beginning of the 20th century more tree hay, was cut, dried and stored for use in Europe than conventional (grass) hay. Furthermore, air meadows didn't just provide food, sheep in particular are known to self-medicate for internal parasites by using the tannins and other phenolic compounds found in leaves. So for free food and medicine, look to the sky.
Pollarding is similar to coppicing- the difference being the former is done above grazing level, cutting branches close to the trunk rather than cutting the entire tree down to a stump.
Only certain tree species can be cut in this way without dying, such as willow and hazel. Pollarding starts when the tree is young (cutting mature trees in this way is calling topping, and usually doesn't heal well), and requires cutting back the new shoots every 2-5 years. This usually results in the swollen knobs pollards are know for!
Usually 5 or so branches are used for pollarding (the rest being chopped down to the trunk competely), but you can cut all branches off too.
A similar technique is used to create tree-like grape vines (Vite ad Alberello, which I've talked about in this post)!