I would look at the pasture and hay you will have access to an then make the decision on how many head you could handle on a part time basis. Also is the owner willing/wanting to help out some??? This could be just keeping an eye on things when you are at work. Raking hay for you if you are at work and the baler guy is coming. This type of thing. Most older land/cattle owners want to do some of this type fo stuff but just not the hard cold winter feeding and spring calving work.
The hay issue is one that you can solve fairly easy in several ways. 1) Just buy a mower and rake. Then hire the round baling done. The mower could easily be just a sickle bar mower conditioner in grass hay. So you could get by without a lot of money. Now with a full time job and 30-50 acres of hay DO NOT buy a $500 Moco and think you are going to get much done. The majority of the guys on here that do that are mowing maybe 5-20 acres of hay and many are retired. They have TIME to play with an old mower to get things done. You will not. By a fairly good machine.
2) IF the farm has a more hay acres than you need then have someone bale it on the shares. Common around here is they do ALL the work and you provide the land/hay and fertilizer. You split the hay 50-50. This is for round bales. Small squares would be 60-40 with the 60 going to the guy doing the work.
3) In grass hay you will usually need an acre of hay per cow./calf pair. This is only true in areas they grow 3-5 tons of forage a year. Out west the numbers would be maybe double per head/acre.
My main question is??? With your low cattle knowledge will the current own be willing to train/educate you in what you need to know??? Like some others have said it is more than throwing feed out and walking away. It also is a high capitol business too. IF the ground you are looking at renting is row crop farmable then I can just about tell you that it will not work if the owner wants current rental rates per acre.
A way I got into cattle years ago was a split owner ship deal. The land/cattle/cow owner kept his cattle and land. He provided the cattle and land. I provided all the equipment and labor. We split the fertilizer 50-50. I baled all the hay, spread the manure, feed the cattle, paid for the Meds. We split the calf income50/50 at weaning. Usually 500-600 LBS calves. If I kept them until finished I bought his share at weaning.
Without more knowledge of your exact deal this is about as good as I can do.
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