I know that people hate the idea of having rabbits, so I came up with a more complicated system.
It consists of 4 parts:
1. Berries (raspberries, different varieties)
2. Trees (walnut, hazelnut, apple)
3. Grass allowed to go to seed
4. Chickens
So the basic idea is, person needs food like fruit and eggs in order to live.
If you have a part of land where grass is not mowed, but allowed to go to seed, it will produce significant amount of grass seeds. Those grass seeds arent that great for human consumption, however, chickens will eat them.
The other part of land is for raspberries.
Raspberries, once planted, grow and spread on their own. But you have to plant different varieties because you dont want to get all which fruit in same month. You very much want to have raspberries multiple times a year. Raspberries can be eaten by chickens as well.
The third part of land is for trees. You just have to be very careful with what trees you select. Walnut trees, for example, can get very big and create lots of shade, so maybe its better to stick to hazel trees and apple trees. These trees, once planted, pretty much grow on their own. Hazelnuts can be a good food source for humans, but also they can be fed to chickens if ground.
The fourth part of land is for chickens to be located on.
So basically, the biggest part of land should probably be dedicated to producing grass seeds, and some edible greens will grow there too on their own.
The second biggest part should be dedicated to different varieties of berries.
The third part of land is used to grow trees. Now, there are cases where you can grow berries under trees on same land. Its not impossible. Trees, such as hazelnut trees or apple trees, can produce fruit for decades, and if you hate waiting for them to grow, you can buy dwarf apple varieties which live shorter but usually produce in a second year after you plant them.
The fourth, smallest part of land, is where chickens are located.
Chickens produce fertilizer, which is used to fertilize the other 3 parts of land.
Chickens are fed grass seeds, weeds and weed seeds, raspberries, apples and nuts.
Also, some slugs which are found on land can be fed to chickens.
This is a solid food system which is a bit more healthy than the old style of "feed cows grass, get milk and meat."
It is more healthy mainly because it includes fruit and nuts as well as animal products.
Besides, its a system more suitable for small piece of land. Cow requires lots of land, and having 5 or more cows and a bull would be too much milk for one person. Well, even two cows are too much milk for one person.
You could say that if chickens were replaced by cows in this system, you would need more land.
You can have like 15 to 20 chickens, which is not a lot but its enough for one person in terms of eggs.
That would require less than an acre of land in total for whole system.
However, for cows, you would likely need more than 3 acres, depending on if you have bull as well, and cows do need to be pregnant to produce milk, so you would either need bull either pay to someone who has, which is in both cases a somewhat expense.
So I would say chickens are better than cows for small land. For larger land, you might even want cows over chickens, since cows do produce milk and cows can make better use of grass. Chickens make the most use out of grass seeds, but grass itself isnt that nutritious to them.
