Chicken pasture maintenance

Speaking of things I was wrong about, here's another example --- mowing the chicken pastures.  Last spring, Mark took a look in my pastures, saw the grass shooting up toward the sky, then pulled out the lawn mower.

"Wait, honey!" I begged.  "Don't mow their grass!  I want the chickens to eat it."

Fast forward ahead a few weeks, and the plants were hitting the bloom stage, becoming too woody for delicate chicken stomachs to digest.  We ended up with unproductive pastures that summer because I let the grass go to seed, which slowed its growth to a standstill.

So, this year, I changed my tune and begged Mark to mow the pastures.  (He also cut out some stumps and dug up some dock to make the mowing go more smoothly.)  My new plan is to mow each pasture as soon as the chickens leave, cutting back the plants the flock didn't like as much (which would otherwise be encouraged by being ignored by chicken beaks).  If necessary, I'll mow some pastures twice between visits, but I hope to be able to simply rotate the flock quickly enough that they'll always be on tender new grass with one mowing per rotation.

Meanwhile, it looks like I should take Mark's other pasture concerns to heart since he seems to have more of an eye for chicken pasture management than I do.  The fences are already becoming overgrown with Japanese honeysuckle, which provides a safe spot for chickens to hide in but looks like it will tear our chicken wire down in just a few years.  Any ideas for honeysuckle removal other than ripping it out by hand?  Even more important --- ideas on keeping the invasive away?