Would definately do that to give them shade and for fruit. Another trick I did when I kept chickens is I kept wheat growing in the winter to feed the chickens the greens. They stay very healthy on wheat but for whatever reason wheat causes chickens to lose feathers. The grain is a perfect food for chickens. The way I buy wheat is drive my truck to fields or the coop during harvest and fill the bed with wheat. Took it home shoveling the wheat into trash cans as inexpensive food. The yearly food supply set me back around $100 for 35 chickens. Here is part of my old flock Clarkinks older fruit and vegetable growing Projects in Kansas
You can also see a patch of open pollinated rye growing there I raised for their feed. I would just set up a mobile chicken wire pen between garden rows and they kept things cleaned out for me. @dutch-s that little one in the top picture is a rescue I flew back as an egg from key west Florida. Most of the eggs were an omelet by the time i got them. His family was apparently apprehended assaulting tourists for their sandwiches. He’s small and looks innocent but he was far from it. A wilder chicken I never owned he made pheasants look tame. He’s standing in front of that barred rock. Barred rock are predator chickens with a hooked beak like you posted earlier. They kill mice with that beak just like a hawk.
Black Sex Links are derived from crossing a male Rhode Island Red with a Barred Rock Hen . Thats why you see so many barred rocks around. They call them sex links because they are easy to sex as the males all look barred rock and the females are all black with red flecks in the feathers. If your planning to eat chickens a sex link makes things easy. Then you know the roosters from hens quickly.