ducks in woodland/silvopasture

i made a little film about the ways that ducks make our farm more resilient, in relationship to the trees and the herd animals, the gardens and the people.

this tiny farm has a pair of old hazel coppices and i’ve been trying to add more just in front of the duckhouse near the pond to increase shade and cover for the birds and firewood and fencing for me (the geese live in it most of the year til they are broody and aggressive, then swap to the duckhouse nearer the farmhouse).

however when i cut the hazels, they died. i’ve also got a start on a willow coppice near the pond but i think the competition from rose and blackberry defeated them…maybe i need several layers cardboard! and my goats got in…sigh.

i’d love any thoughts on getting coppices going! if you check out the film i would love to hear your thoughts. it’s here: https://youtu.be/6BOs62hMSeE

elisa

Elisa,

I am sorry to hear that the hazels died.

Maybe they were too old or at the wrong time of year.

Best wishes for the future coppicing.

When you say 'they died', are you talking about the existing old hazel plants, or the new stem cuttings that you tried to plant by the ducks?
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When pruning back an adult tree for any purpose, including coppicing, you never want to remove 1/3 of the branch mass at a time. (Like, within the same season) - if you want it to live.
If the old hazel haven't been coppiced in over 5 years, and you tried cutting them down to the base.... yeah, I bet that'd kill the poor things. Most adult trees have a rough time surviving being cut down.

When starting from an adult tree, even if it had been coppiced a decade ago, you have to get it used to putting out young branches from lower on the trunk, before you can cut the trunk down lower.
This means cutting a couple big branches down each year. After several years, all of the upper branching should be gone, and you're left with a trunk that has young branches growing out of it.  
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Re-reading your post, I'm not certain we're using the same terminology.

Coppicing is the technique of taking a young, already-established tree and cutting it down every 3-5 years, so that it puts up new branches as 'trunks'.
A 'coppice' is a plant on which coppicing has been done.

If you want to start a 'coppice' of hazel by your ducks, you first have to propagate your hazel, and just... plant hazel. Get an established hazel plant growing first.
You aren't starting a coppice at first, you're just starting a new plant.
You can't really coppice it until after the plant has been established for a few years. It NEEDS a lot of strong, healthy roots to survive being cut back.

So... start by getting hazel or willow trees growing in those spots. Don't worry about coppicing until those plants are rigorously growing.

thanks anne! thanks toko!

it was the new hazels that i’d propagated that died. so i should have waited a few years before cutting them down? my experience with willow was that i needed to cut the following winter after the one i’d planted in.

i’ve been cutting a few lengths from the old coppices so that’s great to hear i’ve been conditioning them…i prefer that anyway, as i love to see them. i did find another hazel that is stuck in a wire fence that i’d like to remove, it’s about 8’ tall, maybe that’s a good candidate to try out coppicing?

i inadvertently coppiced a maple…it was not healthy but when i cut it down it came up beautifully. the ducks love to have their water tub beneathe its shade.