Everybody oughta get into the cow business at least once in their life.
Hope you're thinking about a few extra things other than what color calves and how many acres you have available.
How you gonna haul them around? How you gonna catch em up to haul them around? How you gonna doctor them if'n the need arises? You have open water year around? Hay once your grass shuts down for the winter? You have a way to haul hay and other feed?
If you're gonna feed one, feed two, they'll just do much better than one. You should be able to sell halves or quarters of what you don't want to friends, family, or neighbors. I don't have any experience in just grass feeding calves to fats, but I do feed some every year on a high corn/protein diet. My calves will usually have an average gain of 3-3.5 pounds/day. I'd just guess that a straight grass diet would be half that at best. I've no idea what the barley would do, but it should bump you up to a pretty good rate of grain if you feed it right. When mine are on full feed they're eating about 24 pounds of grain and pretty much all the hay they want.
A good pasture fertilizer will add about 50% more grass, it's worth it if you have some way of applying it.
Look at the initial cost of buying a 5-7 weight steer, look at the value of a fat. Try to estimate your costs in between, not gonna be a lot of wiggle room there.
Initially, it certainly would be cheaper to go with a black and white calf. But when you have a 1000 pound holstein standing out in your pasture you probably have about 800 pounds of bones, hide, guts, and head. There's a reason them critters are cheaper.
Don't get too big a hat, and hold off on the spurs, probably just trip you up and scuff up the wife's hardwood floors.
