I run sheep on 10 acres. I am lucky in that I have grass year around. After I factor in the cost of fencing,
shelters, predator control, loses, medications, feed supplements, fly control, and miscellaneous expenses, I surely don't make much
profit. I make the most profit off of selling pet bottle lambs, but there is a very limited market for them. I'll never get rich off of sheep. But they supply our own safe to eat nutritious meat, keep the grass under control, and give me a valuable product for trading. By the way, we butcher our own and arrange commercial butchering for buyers. We save big time that way. When we have to use a commercial butcher for resale meat, it severely cuts into the profit, making selling meat at a farmers market hardly worth the effort....especially since I have to pay a hefty county permit to do that.
I won't run cattle because the costs are too high. Besides, cattle are more apt to hurt or kill me. Plus they are much harder to confine than sheep. My fencing would need to be upgraded. And I'd either have to maintain a commercial freezer or rent space at the slaughter house to store the meat. And there is not much of a market for live steers here. On top of that, I don't know that much about them so I'd need to hire a veterinarian to deal with medical problems. At least the sheep I can deal with myself.
I don't know what species to suggest. It all depends on your area, market, ability, and knowledge, and which you like. I've found that you really need to LIKE the type of livestock you work with. It sounds like you're not already knowledgable with any particular species of livestock. So my only suggestions are:
...start out slow
...don't invest a lot of money into purchasing lots of stock
...read and learn as much as you can about the species you decide upon
...hook up with someone who is local who already is working with that type of animal
I've heard plenty of stories of people who invested all their money into livestock they knew nothing about, then ended up losing them all and going broke. Boer goats. Potbellied pigs. Ostriches. Alpacas. Even a large dairy goat herd, a commercial rabbitry, and fancy show ponies. Livestock can die on you if you don't know what you're doing. When I started with sheep, I lost many to various problems.....flystrike, parasites, nutritional problems, fencing accidents, predators. I learned a lot from each disaster. But since I started out on a small scale, it wasn't a financial disaster. Plus I was willing and able to literally eat our loss or use the dead sheep to feed the dogs, chickens, or pigs.
Being new to farming just means that you'll need to do a lot of learning.