Animal fodder aka tree fodder, leaf hay.
"Poplar and willow provide fodder of sufficient quality and quantity to warrant using then as supplements for feeding to livestock"
— Poplar and Willow Research Trust
Most animals used in farming eat grass, that's the conventional wisdom. Cows, grass. Horses, grass. But put them in a field with a hedgerow and they'll snack on that. When I lived in Cromer I'd watch my friend's pigs jostle for position to munch on the young twigs at the edge of the field. I've watched goats climb up trees to nibble on leaves, and we've all seen wildlife footage of the likes of giraffes and elephants getting all they can of tree goodies. Heck, the giraffe evolved to do this and get to as much of the tree was feasible. Early farmers surely noticed this, and must have fed their livestock on such food.
The practice goes back thousands of years. It's certain that in tree-covered Europe the habit of pollarding trees was practiced early, the Roman poet Propertius mentioning it in the 1st century BCE and it was certainly common throughout the mediaeval period up to the 1930s. Pollarding literally refers to beheading a tree; cutting it off at head height or above and encouraging a lot of young, thinner growth. In The Worm Forgives the Plough, John Collis mentions it when discussing woodland management alongside coppicing. The advantage of pollarding for tree hay is that trees can be encouraged to produce their new growth above the grazing level of livestock, whereas coppicing makes it easier to collect the twigs or poles for craft use in tools, baskets and furniture.
Trees employed in this manner included most of the deciduous trees; poplar, ash, willow, even holly. Before the coming of Dutch elm disease, elm was also popular. Oak and walnut may have been gathered in some small quantity as it was commonly thought the tannins had a beneficial effect on the digestion. The crop would be gathered in the summer when the tree was still growing; the nutrients would be at their peak and the tree would have a little time to recover before autumn. The young branches would be bound up in bundles ("faggots") and stored in layers, usually under some cover. Trees would be cropped every one to three years depending on the species and the intended livestock.
The practice of harvesting tree hay has seen some resurgence in recent years with the increased interest in sustainable and regenerative agriculture, and especially in permaculture, where the trees are not overshading the growing plants beneath them.
Quite a bit of research is being carried out into how best to incorporate it into livestock feed and the results have been encouraging. Studies have shown that whilst digestibility of tree leaves is poorer than in grass or alfalfa hay, both mineral and protein content are high. In addition, trees, having deeper root systems and beneficial mycorrhizal fungae around their roots, can produce greenery in times of drought, providing much-needed additional fodder with much less irrigation. The old wives tales of feeding tannin-rich fodder to ruminants turns out to be true; tannin-rich fodder does improve protein digestion and can reduce intestinal parasites.
One downside is that harvesting trees is more labour-intensive than field crops, so it tends to be used more on smaller farms, where there's also the benefit of increasing habitats for the purposes of biodiversity. Like hedgerows, pollards provide structure for more diverse wildlife. It can also provide insurance against failure of a meadow hay crop if the summer season is hostile to harvesting; cold and wet hay harvests can result in loss, which can be of vital importance for small-scale farmers. So trim your trees, or make hay while the sun shines.
https://agricology.co.uk/blog/tree-hay-forgotten-fodder/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_hay
https://www.mofga.org/resources/livestock/tree-leaf-fodder-for-livestock/
https://www.poplarandwillow.org.nz/library/filter/research-briefs
For Zephronias. Iron node 9
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