Winter shade makes bad chicken pasture

A second flaw in our winter forest pasture became clear over the last few weeks --- shade.  I thought I was clever when I put the chickens' pasture up against the hillside where steep slopes and a powerline cut make it difficult to grow vegetables and impossible to grow fruit trees.  At least that open space would be used for something.  But I had forgotten that the north-facing hillside stays frozen pretty much all winter.  Due to several small to medium-sized snows, the pasture has spent nearly all month under constant snowcover.  That means that our chickens have nothing to scratch at even if I hadn't let them overgraze the pasture down to stubble.

At this time of year, I usually have the flock in the sunniest part of the yard, and I'm considering adding a new pasture down there for the winter months.  There would be no way to make it contiguous with their current pastures, but it might be worth building a second coop and herding the chickens through the garden to give them a bit of winter sun and greenery.  As an added bonus, I could fence in a few fruit trees and get the chickens' help managing insect pests.  Either way, I'll keep the current pastures for summer use since the shady spot is great during sunny days, and our everbearing mulberry and Nanking cherries are getting well established and will fruit in a year or two.