By CELESTE BAUMGARTNER
Ohio Correspondent

HAMILTON, Ohio — The goal with SKJ Farms’ cattle herd is to efficiently raise high quality feeder calves. The farm was a stop on the recent Ohio Cattlemen’s Roundup tour.

“In general, because we’re a small farm we tend to look at raising high quality crops – hay, calves and freezer beef,” said Steve Kazin. “We compete on the high quality end.”

SKJ Farms is a grain, hay and cattle farm owned by Steve and June Kazin, their son Jeff and his wife, Jennifer. The operation includes 940 acres in Butler and Preble counties. About 70 grade Hereford, Angus and crossbred cows are bred to Angus bulls. Income from the herd comes from feeder calves, cull cows and fed calves for freezer beef.

The naturally raised beef is a high-choice prime product. The family does not use any therapeutic levels of
antibiotics, no implants or growth hormones, Kazin said. They do use natural feed – corn and soybeans.

SKJ markets its beef through word of mouth, a newsletter sent from the farm and “business cards that we provide anybody that will take them,” Kazin said. “The process is that we take an order and a down payment and then we have to schedule in the animal at a custom slaughterhouse.”

Kazin likes working through state-inspected facilities to know that the animal is humanely destroyed and the product is watched carefully after that.

The family has worked to improve the efficiency with which it raises its animals. The greatest cost in maintaining a herd in southwestern Ohio is winter feeding. They have done four things to reduce those costs, Kazin said, including:

•They downsized the size of their cows from about 1,500 to 1,300 pounds because cows eat in proportion to their weight. They choose replacement cows that grow into smaller cows.

•They use intense rotational grazing, moving the cows every five to six days. They have a rotation of 28-30 days. Rotational grazing provides a more nutritious diet because the animals are eating newly grown grass. It also allows the cows to get on pasture earlier in spring and to stay on later in the fall.

•The third thing is allowing the cows to graze on residues after the crops are harvested. The crop fields are fenced in 30- to 40-acre pieces to facilitate this.

•Finally, they graze the hayfields late in the season. They have gotten away from making late season hay.

An outgrowth of decreasing the time the cattle are fed baled hay is that when the family has sufficient hay for their cattle, they bind the hay in small bales and sell it mainly to the horse market.

“It’s one of those things where that hay is the higher quality hay, so there’s a higher price,” Kazin said. “It’s something on a small scale that we can afford to do and be profitable.”

On a larger scale, the family shows concern for the environment in farming practices. “All of us are aware that we have to tend to our own land, but we have a responsibility to the environment around us,” he said.

With the support of the Butler Soil and Water Conservation District they have more than a mile of grassed waterways, and have built a dry stack for manure; this keeps the manure dry and eliminates runoff.

Farming was an avocation for Kazin until he retired from General Electric; now he farms full-time. He picks up new ideas attending forums “where farmers tell other farmers what works for them,” he said.

For information on SKJ Farms or their freezer beef phone 513-659-4040.