Anne Lurie wrote:

Hey, Robin, welcome to tri.gardens!

I read through other responses to your post (as usual, to avoid restating
the obvious or making a total fool out of myself), but they did not address
a few issues that came to mind immediately for me:

Do you have to hold the branches to feed them into the chipper?

NO!!! You DO NOT HOLD the sticks as they are going in. Just toss them
in, the chipper will do the rest.