Chickens and cover crops

Chickens and cover crops go very well together.  Harvey Ussery uses his flock to scratch in whole sections of cover crops when they're mature, but our more patchwork garden requires me to get creative about putting chickens together with cover crops.  Luckily, chickens and cover crops are both so flexible, you can combine them in a way that's bound to fit just about any farm.

This year, I'm letting a couple of my cover crops go to seed, then I'm cutting them for bedding and feed in the chicken coop.  The photo to the left shows the sunflower heads I clipped and hung for our girls to peck at when they get bored --- I left the roots and stalks to decay in the garden and the empty heads will eventually become part of the coop's bedding.

Similarly, I usually tear up buckwheat as it reaches full bloom, but I let one bed get away from me and seeds formed.  I don't want to let those buckwheat plants decay in the garden the way I usually do since buckwheat seeds can be a weed problem, so I hauled the plants into the coop to refresh the deep bedding while giving our birds a snack.

Of course, if you take cover crops away from the garden, you don't get organic matter buildup in the soil, which is the technique's primary purpose.  However, deep bedding goes from the coop back to the garden in the spring, so those nutrients will just keep cycling through the farm.

What's your favorite way to combine cover crops with chickens?