Steve McPherson and Sam Kizer

Steve and Sam Kizer of Savannah Farm are co-owners of 3T Angus Beef in Snow Camp and have been running cattle together for the past 17 years. Like a lot of cattle farmers in this part of the state, we used to raise beef to sell at auction and destined for Midwestern feedlots for finishing. But raising cattle as a commodity didn’t allow us to focus on quality, and it meant accepting the really low and often variable prices we’d get at the auction barn. 
     So, in 1995, we switched to purchasing purebred registered Angus beef so that  we could maintain the quality of our herd and focus on selling premium bulls. In 2007 we took the next big step and started finishing cattle on grass.  We’ve been in transition to 100 percent grass-fed ever since. The only way we can imagine maintaining the viability of our farm operation into the future is to produce high quality beef that people feel good about eating and that means raising cattle on grass without using synthetic hormones or animal by-products. The future of our farm is the consumer who wants safe, nutritious, high quality food.
     We both also raise chickens on contract for Pilgrim’s Pride and roughly 70 percent of our farm income comes from raising hatching eggs. Our goal is to have the cattle business be at least 50 percent if not more of our overall farm income.”  At 3T, we enjoy independence of farming and working directly with animals but there are challenges to raising cattle entirely on grass. The cows don’t put on as much weight as quickly as grain fed cattle so we have to keep them longer. This takes up more land.  But, the feed costs are lower. If we weren’t making full use of our pastures right now, our feed bill would be through the roof.

3T Angus Beef
9255 Snow Camp Rd.
Snow Camp, NC 27349