- [Announcer] "Montana Ag Live" is made possible by the Montana Department of Agriculture, (lighthearted music) MSU Extension, (lighthearted music) the MSU Ag Experiment Station of the College of Agriculture, (lighthearted music) the Montana Wheaton Barley Committee, Cashman Nursery and Landscaping, (lighthearted music) the Gallatin Gardeners Club, and the Montana Federation of Garden Clubs.

(country music) - You are tuned to "Montana Ag Live," originating today from the studios of KUSM on the very dynamic campus of Montana State University, and coming to you over your Montana Public Television System.

I'm Jack Riesselman, retired Professor of Plant Pathology.

Happy to be your host this evening.

We're gonna have an interesting program.

Now, I know I'm gonna learn a lot because we have the Director of Montana Department of Livestock here, or Executive Director.

Anyway.

I've always thought that they, for years, were part of the Department of Ag, but it's an independent agency.

We'll learn a lot more about it this evening.

And before we get there, I'm gonna introduce this evening's panel.

Way on my left, Sam Wyffels.

Sam is Extension Beef Specialist.

He knows everything you want to know about how to cook beef.

(Jack and guests laughing) - I suppose.

- And every cut.

If you have any questions about that, (guests laughing) we're gonna get Sam tonight.

But seriously, anything you wanna know about beef, cattle, Sam will help you.

Mike Honeycutt.

Mike is the Executive Director of the Livestock Department here in Montana, located in Helena.

Mike has been in the state for about 10 years, very knowledgeable about some of the issues surrounding livestock in the state.

We'll have a lot of questions for Mike this evening.

You're gonna learn a lot, I know I will.

Jane Mangold, Invasive Plant Specialist.

Boy, does that hurt.

I like to say Weed Scientist, but we'll go with Invasive Plant Specialist this evening.

And of course, Abi Saeed, Abi's our Horticulturalist answering the Vicki Young and Carl Whitmer, thanks for being here.

Phone number will be up on the screen here shortly.

It's an evening that you can probably get your questions answered, although it's not the nicest evening outside.

So I think we'll have a pretty good size audience tonight.

So get those questions in early, and we'll give it our best effort to get them on the air tonight.

Mike, tell us about the Department of Livestock.

- Well, thank you, Jack.

The Montana Department of Livestock is a state agency, as you mentioned.

We're an executive-level agency, along with Montana Fish Wildlife and Parks, Montana Department of Agriculture, all of those agencies that you're very familiar with.

We do have a Board of Livestock that's appointed by the governor that sits as the head of our agency.

So, they set the strategic priorities and the budget and policy priorities for the agency.

And I get to manage that agency day to day in Helena.

So, I always try to break our mission into three specific areas.

We deal with animal health and food safety.

So, in animal health, disease, surveillance, diagnostics, responding to incidents of animal disease in the state of Montana.

And then on the food safety side, doing meat, milk and egg inspection across the state of Montana.

Our second missionary is preventing theft and fraud of livestock.

So we have a law enforcement arm within the department and also regulate livestock markets, dealers, buyers.

And then, lastly, we have a little bit of a role in predator control in protecting livestock So, we do some programs for coyote management across the state of Montana, as well as doing reimbursement to livestock producers that lose livestock to apex predators.

And then, we also deal with trying to put out some money to help mitigate the conflict between livestock and predators.

- [Jack] Sounds like you're kind of busy at times.

- [Mike] Yes, yes.

Very busy.

- I've heard Mike talk a couple times at the annual Economics Conference that we have during Ag Week here in Montana at Montana State University.

And you always talk about threats to animal health.

You wanna elaborate on what you consider to be some of the potential threats to our livestock industry-health-wise?

- Yes, well, there's always the existing threats that we have out there across the state.

So, if you're talking about, in the cattle industry, we're dealing with Brucellosis.

We do have a wildlife reservoir aboard us within the state of Montana in the southwest, and so we're having to do disease surveillance programs, test animals from moving in and out of that area to protect our trading partners outside of Montana.

So, that's one that's ever present with us.

As well as occasionally, things with horses.

The equine infectious anemia, equine herpes virus got a lot of play within the last year.

We've done a lot of work on high-path avian influenza in both poultry and dairy cattle in Montana.

Have not had any detections in dairy cattle, but have been doing surveillance in dairy cattle in Montana over the last couple of years.

And then probably also dealing with bovine tuberculosis.

That's one that's pops up in the state every couple of decades.

We had an incident with that several years ago.

But the emergent things that we're always working on are foot and mouth disease.

That's one that really is something we prepare for, we hope we never have to deal with it in the state of Montana.

African swine fever is another one that's not in the United States at the present, but one that we plan and prepare for quite a bit.

And then, I would also say, it's not a disease, but the New World screwworm in Mexico currently, as it's approached our southern border, has been something we've had to think about and plan and prepare for.

If it was introduced to Montana, how would we respond?

- I grew up, and you always heard about hoof and mouth disease.

What part of the world is hoof and mouth disease present today?

- It's present in several, across several continents.

Not in North America, thankfully, but there are reservoirs of foot and mouth disease in South America and Africa.

Actually, in Eastern Europe, there was some concerns with it here within about the last year, particularly in Hungary.

So, it's out there.

- All right.

Sam, you're in the Animal and Marine Science Department.

Do you guys talk to each other very often?

- Not directly, I talk with your office.

(Jack and Sam laughing) It is not very often that I speak to Mike directly, but yeah, so with Extension, we put on a whole bunch of talks with beef cattle producers across the state.

It's not uncommon that a topic or area of interest is disease, how to prepare for disease, several things that you already mentioned.

And so, I've contacted the office a few times and got speakers, some of the veterinarians that are working in the Montana Department of Livestock to come and speak towards some of the regulations that have come down, policies, and as well as just disease preparation, and record keeping.

- Okay, I will say that our livestock industry in Montana is probably one of the tops in the country based on the desire for our genetics here, and so forth and so on.

So, both of you guys do a pretty good job.

I won't say a great job, I mean... No, you do.

Just joking.

Last week, I'm gonna switch over to Abi.

This came from Clyde Park, and it's a tough question, but you can tell them what they might want to do.

They have a cottonwood tree removed, and now the grass that was underneath it is dying.

What is happening and how would you remedy it?

So, any suggestions?

- That's tough without seeing the site and knowing a little bit more background, so I'd be interested to know how the cottonwood was removed, if there was a lot of soil disturbance.

What I might recommend is that you contact your County Extension Agent.

They can do a site visit so they can come and investigate.

They can even help you do soil sampling to get to the bottom of what could be going on.

And if the turf was healthy before and isn't now, looking into some of that management history.

So, without more information and without seeing the site, I wouldn't be able to help very much.

But your County Extension Agent is a great resource.

- [Jack] Or send your picture, too.

- Or send a picture.

Absolutely.

- Yeah, that would help, too.

This is a tough question, I may not... Maybe I shouldn't ask you, but I'm going to, it came from Helena.

And it says, "How does removing Americans prairies' grazing right serve the school trust program?"

Any thoughts on that?

- Yeah, it's a difficult question.

I think it's talking about State Trust Lands, which is under the management of the Department of Natural Resource and Conservations.

Constitutionally, those lands are to be managed to return funding to the public schools.

And as far as that particular incident, I don't have the answer to that, that'd probably better posed to the State Trust Land Division at DNRC.

- [Jack] And they can find them on the website, probably.

- Yes.

- Okay.

Before I forget, you brought some salad.

Mixing in.

You wanna tell us... We had a lot of questions about last week, and that's why I asked you to bring it in.

Show them what it is and tell them even better how to get rid of it.

- You're talking about the whitetop, right?

- [Jack] The salad, yes.

- Yeah.

It does kind of look like salad leaves.

So this is whitetop, it is a noxious weed.

It's a invasive mustard and it is rhizomatous.

So, I tried... This sample right here kind of shows how that root is crawling underground for where other plants sprout up.

So that's what makes it especially challenging to manage is that rhizomatous nature.

So, a couple tips for identifying this.

This plant has... It's just starting to form its flowers, but it'll have, it's called whitetop because it has white four-petaled flowers that, when they're all in flower, it kind of looks like a white carpet.

Or kind of like- - I think we have a photo or something.

- Yeah, I think there's a... Should be a picture of that.

There you go.

- Oh, there it is.

Yeah.

- [Jane] It almost looks like old snow banks, in a way.

Like, it's not a bright white- - [Jack] It's kind of pretty.

- It's kind of a yellowish white.

And then the other feature to notice on whitetop 'cause there are other white-flowered mustards that are kind of a nuisance, but not invasive.

It has the base of the leaves clasp the stem.

So, they kind of wrap around the stem, like they're putting their arms, giving the stem a hug.

Yeah, there's a great picture.

The leaves are also kind of rubbery.

They are kind of like a cabbage.

So maybe we could make a salad from this.

It's an early season noxious weed.

It is probably one of the first to flower.

I would say this is a little behind compared to probably where most of the rest of the state is.

As far as getting rid of it, once you have well-established populations, it's very difficult to get rid of it completely.

It's probably more like you're looking at trying to maintain, maintain it at a level that is tolerable.

Animal livestock will not eat it.

It's unpalatable.

If you're looking at managing it, you could do mowing.

I mean, you could mow it just to keep it from producing seeds.

I would recommend probably a herbicide application, herbicides that include Metsulfuron, or Chlorsulfuron will work on this.

We also have a bio control.

It's a mite that Jeff Littlefield here at MSU has been working on.

He does have... It's been released into some field sites around the state, I think about 30 different sites.

And what happens is this might, if I remember correctly, it attaches the flower heads and keeps it from producing seeds and just kind of stunts the overall size of the plant.

So, that's a promising tool for whitetop because, as I said earlier, once it's well-established, it's really hard to completely get rid of it, even with a chemical control operation.

But I think maybe with a combination of things, like biocontrol, and herbicides, and just good pasture management for the desired species can help.

- I've always thought it was a problem in alfalfa.

Am I incorrect?

- It can be a problem in alfalfa, for sure.

- [Jack] Okay.

All right.

- Yeah.

- [Jack] Sounds good.

Thanks, Jane.

- Yep.

- And we had a lot of questions on last week, so I asked her to find some, and you did a great job.

- [Jane] We do have a Extension publication on it that pretty much tells you everything we know about whitetop at this point.

- Yeah, I have a couple callers here.

One, it's this guy from Laurel, and he says he doesn't really wanna say he's from Laurel because his neighbor would know that he was from the town that he was calling from.

But he wants to know, his rancher friend always talks about Baldies.

What is a Baldy?

- Yeah, yeah, I can get this one.

- Okay.

- Yeah.

Jack likes to throw me really hard questions, but I can get this one.

So a Baldy is typically, they're referring to a crossbred cattle that's... Most of the time, I would say is a Hereford-Angus Cross.

And so you end up with a black-headed cow and we call those Black Baldies or Baldies in general.

- Okay.

So, that was an easy one.

- [Sam] Yeah.

- I probably could have even answered that one and I'm not an animal scientist.

Mike, good question from Great Falls.

This caller says he has bison, buffalo, whatever you want to call them, pays taxes on them, and they are like livestock and he wants to know if he would be able to graze them on state land if he could get a lease.

Also, would like the Taylor Grazing Act explained a little bit in light of the recent BLM decisions.

- [Mike] Yes.

- Have at it.

- Yeah, so yes, there's domestic bison within the state of Montana that pay per capita fees to the Department of Livestock.

As far as the management of those on State Trust Lands, again, I'm not an expert on what those grazing leases entail, and the State Trust Land Division that I mentioned before would probably be the right place to start that question with and look them up online and call them.

As far as the second part of the question with the Taylor Grazing Act, so the Taylor Grazing Act was passed in the 1930s.

Largely, there was a lot of land here in the Western United States that had not been homesteaded, that was still in the hands of the federal government.

Largely, some of it had been tried to be homesteaded, but then failed.

And so the government needed to do something with those lands.

And through the Taylor Grazing Act, they decided that those lands would be used to stabilize the livestock industry and be used to the benefit of the local communities around those BLM lands.

And so that's... Or around those lands, and that's what the basis of our Bureau of Land Management lands that we see mostly around Montana today are.

And so the purpose of that Act was to lay out how those lands could and should be used to the benefit of the local communities and to help stabilize the livestock industry within those areas of the West, primarily.

Most BLM lands are west of the Mississippi River.

- Okay.

I didn't know that, thank you.

I told you I'd learned something, no comment.

Okay.

Abi, a question came in via email.

This person has trouble transplanting Is there a trick or tips on how it might be more successful?

- Yeah, so that is a common problem.

Squash, pumpkin, lots of cucurbits, so that group of plants have really sensitive fibrous root systems.

So, if you are pulling them out of a flat and disturbing the roots, they're gonna struggle a lot.

And so a lot of people have issues with transplanting them.

One of the ways that you can help minimize those issues and protect those root systems is by using things like soil blocks.

I've really been enjoying kind of experimenting with these, but you have this like apparatus where you just compress the growing medium into this little block, and then you put the seed directly in it.

And the cool thing about that is you don't need to pull anything out.

You don't need to touch the root system.

So, you can directly plant that into the soil without disturbing the root system.

So, I might recommend that, and I would say now is still not the time to plant these in the soil.

You wanna wait until your soil temperatures are at about 60 to 65 degrees Fahrenheit to do that.

- One last tip, don't transplant on a windy, breezy day.

- Yeah, and you wanna harden off any transplants over a two-week process.

So that means exposing them to the outdoors, short periods at a time for a two-week period, exposing them to wind, doing some disturbance, just to get them ready to experience the - And Abi, what about planting from seed?

Like, I've planted cucumbers and summer squash by seed is... - Yeah, a lot of people have more success with that because you're not disturbing the root system.

So that's why it's pretty common to recommend directly seeding these, as opposed to transplanting, but it is still possible to transplant.

- Is it too early to direct seed still?

- I would say still, it could still be, depending on where you're located.

So check your soil temperature because if the soil temperature is 50 or below, it's still too cold, it's not gonna do very much.

- Okay.

- And with these like warm season veggies, they need that warmer soil temperature to get going.

- Planting them in the snow I had this morning probably is not a good idea.

- Yeah, yeah.

For those of us who've been itching to plant, I'm glad that hopefully everyone's been patient.

- Okay.

Back to Mike.

From Billings.

This caller wants to know how a producer goes about selling their livestock brand.

Does that question make any sense?

- Yes, it does.

So, livestock brands within the state of Montana, the Department of Livestock is responsible for the registry and ownership.

We have about 50,000 brands owned by individuals and different corporations across the state of Montana.

Of course, for those who are very familiar with livestock brands, that's the hot arm brand that you apply to the animal.

This time of year, we're in the branding season.

That is the evidence of ownership, the best evidence of ownership that producers can use.

Those are owned by the individual and those can be sold or transferred by the individual.

So, if they were looking to sell a livestock brand there's lots of publications around the state, like the Western Ag Reporter, those types of classifieds that basically, you'll see a lot of livestock brands for sale there.

But just lots of places you can publicly advertise.

I would recommend having an image of the brand, and obviously what type of price you're looking for.

- So that brings up a question that I have.

Do we still need to brand cattle in Montana?

There's a lot of other technologies out there to identify livestock, but we still have a tendency to brand.

Is that still a necessity in the state?

- Yeah, I would say, in a state like Montana, a big-range state where animals spend a lot of time out of our site, where the country is pretty rugged.

We do have RFID tags, but the retention of those tags can be kind of tough in certain locations.

But the brand is always there, always identifiable, and we know that mark is registered and who the owner of that is.

So, it's very easy to sort that out.

There's some great things going on with RFID technology, some great things going on with facial recognition of cattle.

But as far as what we do here in Montana, the brand is the prima facie evidence of ownership under state law.

And so that is, I would say, the best, most proven tool we have for making sure your animals are marked and identifiable, and we are able to find them, and locate them, and sort them out when the time comes.

- If I... I won't do this, but if I were to start raising cattle and call it a J.R.

something or other... - [Jane] J. R. Ewing.

- Yeah.

(Jack and guests laughing) What would it cost me if I wanted to get a new brand?

- Yes.

So, you can register.

Registering the brand with the Department, I'll say, is a lot different than people who privately sell their brand.

A lot of times, we don't regulate that.

People can sell their brand for whatever they want.

But to register a new brand, there's an application process through the department.

You give us the image that you would like.

We do a conflict check to make sure your brand is not too close to someone else's livestock brand within your area because we do need to be able to identify them from each other.

So you may not be able to get the exact image you want, but the cost of that application and registration is $200 with the state of Montana.

And then, it has to be rerecorded every to maintain ownership.

- [Jack] Okay.

- [Jane] I have another question.

- Uh-oh.

- Do you have to have cattle to have a brand?

Because I can see where some people would not be livestock producers, but they would think it'd be cool to have an official brand.

- That's an excellent question.

I would discourage that.

As I said earlier, when you have a brand, we do a conflict check to make sure that brand does not look too similar.

So, the more brands we have in the system, the harder it is for people who need a new brand to put on cattle, the harder it is for them to get the brand they want 'cause those images may conflict with each other.

We actually, at the department, have what we call an ornamental brand.

So you can register as an ornamental, which means you basically say, "I'm never gonna use this on livestock."

And so, it takes it out of the conflict check system.

I would go that direction if I was going to own a brand but knew that I was not gonna apply it to livestock.

- Sounds good, that's interesting.

Anyway, by the way, we're getting a lot of questions, but keep them coming because we're gonna get through a lot of them tonight.

This one is for Sam.

It says, "How do I prepare my herd," you didn't say how large.

"For the drought that we're probably gonna be experiencing this year?"

And we are dry around the state.

- Yeah, yeah, so I've seen a few climatologists give talks and I've even seen the hydrologist give it talk.

And so, our snow pack was nowhere near where we would like to see it.

So, that's a problem.

And then, yeah, a lot of people are hoping this transition from a La Nina to an El Nino was gonna be a really nice slow process, so that we would actually end up with a cooler wetter spring than we would normally.

I just saw a headline come across my computer the other day that it's happening way faster than they planned, which would signal pretty likely that we might be going into drought conditions.

And I was just out on some range pasture at the university the other day and it was looking... There wasn't a whole lot there.

So the real tools that we have as producers, I guess you can, you could, is inventory.

So, how many cows that you have.

And then stockpiled forages.

So, if you're able to hold onto some hay in the past or you have some ability to gain some other pasture or gain some other hay, basically just trying to stockpile forages or be prepared to sell some cattle off and reduce inventory.

I would say that the two back-to-back droughts that we had a few years ago, a lot of folks had already reduced inventory.

And if I'm not mistaken, there's only been about a 1% increase since then.

So, there's a good chance that a lot of guys are probably already on the little bit on the light side of the herd.

But I don't see this probably being a year to grow your herd if we're in a drought situation.

- I have seen a lot of alfalfa moving the last couple weeks, which is probably an indication that people are somewhat concerned about dry conditions.

And a lot of this was actually two-year hay that's being shipped right now.

So, you're right.

I've got, Jack, another question from Bozeman.

This person says he's heard Jack talk about sweet breads on the program before when he went to Argentina.

He can't recall what part of the cow it comes from.

I told you that you could get some questions like this.

You want follow up on that?

- [Sam] What'd you call it?

- [Jack] Sweet breads.

- Sweet bread?

- [Jack] Yeah.

- I've never heard of sweet bread.

I don't even know what that is.

- Yeah, I'm at a loss as well, you might have to describe it more.

- [Jack] Well, I can throw in, it's the thymus gland of animals.

- Oh, okay.

- Okay.

- And it's delicious, and they serve it a lot in Argentina and in vast communities in Nevada.

So, they got you here and you learned something tonight.

- [Sam] Yeah, there you go.

Yeah, I'm learning something here.

- Okay, we talked about this ahead of time.

Billings, for Mike and Jane.

Do we have wild pigs in Montana and do we need to be worried about them arriving?

Mike, I'll let you go first.

- Yeah.

So we do have responsibility for feral pigs in the state of Montana.

One of the many things I didn't mention at the beginning, we do have a Squeal on Pigs!

hotline that we encourage people that see any loose pigs in their vicinity to call into.

As far as established populations of feral pigs, there are not any currently in Montana.

There are established populations in Canada, those are the closest populations to us currently.

They're probably 100 or so miles from the border up in Alberta and Saskatchewan at the present time.

However, we do have lots of concerns about people introducing feral pigs to Montana.

There are people who have an interest for that.

And then there's also a concern about the fact that our domestic pig populations could just be turned loose.

We did have an incident in Malta earlier this year with a feral pig or a domestic pig population that wasn't being managed very well.

Luckily, we worked with the owner to get those pigs and to have them processed for meat, so that that would no longer be a concern of those pigs escaping and establishing a feral population in that area.

- And Mike, were you saying that it only takes a couple generations of a population being unmanaged before they can really start being feral?

- That's correct, pigs probably go feral about as fast as any of the domestic populations we have.

They began to show feral physical characteristics and behaviors.

With this group in Malta, even though they had been behind a fence, they really had not had any sort of domestic activity with them for a while.

So it had only taken a couple of years for them to become feral.

Pigs obviously have a lot different gestation period than cattle and other species.

So, those generations come a lot faster and those changes can come a lot faster.

- They're litter size, too, so I watched a presentation on this, where how long it takes to go from just a couple pigs to hundreds of pigs, and it's unreal how fast when you got 10 to 20 piglets per litter and I think they can breed multiple times a year.

Like, it's an exponential growth.

It's pretty crazy how fast.

You can go from not having a problem to having a pretty big problem.

- [Mike] Absolutely.

- And I can see where some people might wonder like, "What's so bad about feral pigs?"

I mean, I know for one thing that they cause a lot of damage to vegetation because they root around.

So, if you have these sound... Is it a sounder?

Is that what a- - A sounder.

- Yeah, if you have these moving across the landscape, they can do a lot of range damage.

- Yes, a lot of ecological damage.

They also can predate.

They can predate on small wildlife, deer, they can predate on lambs.

They've been known to do that.

So, they have that concern.

And then the disease concern, they do carry a lot of diseases, potentially pseudo rabies.

We talked earlier.

I said African swine fever was something we don't have in the United States, but we have concern about in certain areas of Europe where their feral pig populations have contracted African swine fever.

That has completely shut off their ability to export pork out of those countries.

Germany had a huge problem with it.

So, there could be lots of domestic livestock concerns with the presence of feral pigs and what goes on with them.

- Yeah.

- Okay.

Question for Jane.

Thank you, Mike.

This person has a weed in her garden that is called Virginia something.

She's been told it's a bad weed.

Any idea what it might be?

- The only plant that came to mind when I heard Virginia was Virginia creeper.

- [Jack] Yeah.

- I would suggest the person get a sample into their County Extension Office.

I don't remember, Jack, if you said where the call was coming from, but get a sample to your Local Extension Office.

And if they don't know what it is, they'll send it into the Schutter Diagnostic Lab and we'll figure that out.

And then once we know, we can give better recommendations for managing it.

- [Jack] Yeah, that's sidestepping the - Well, but it's hard to... The first step of integrated pest management- - [Jack] I agree.

- Is identifying your pest, so- - Okay, you got me.

All right, I'll accept that.

From Billings.

Since BLM is terminating the AP lease for bison, I assume that's the American prairie, and they're paying twice the fees compared to cattle, will lease fees goes up for cattle or will the fees stay the same?

It's an interesting question.

I don't know if we have an answer for that tonight.

- Yeah, I don't know if I have an answer for that with regards to BLM fees.

- Yeah.

We'll see if we can figure that one out and maybe address it another time.

Sam, what percent of Montana beef is sold in Montana?

I know it's very low, and how much of it in the US and how much do we export?

Do you have any clue on- - Of Montana beef?

- [Jack] Yeah.

- Ooh, shoot, I wish Eric Blasco is here.

He would probably know that.

He does a lot with imports, exports, and tracking beef markets in Montana.

I can't say, just generally speaking, that we are a big cow calf state.

We're the seventh largest cow calf producer in the country.

We're the number one seed stock registered herd producer in the country.

I've heard some crazy statistics about Montana-generated genetics and how far that has spread worldwide, and it's amazingly high for what you would expect from Montana.

In terms of beef, most of our calves are weaned and shipped to feed yards elsewhere.

There are a couple of reasonably sized feed yards in Montana, but when you look at the overall herd numbers and what we can feed here in state right now, it's not a whole lot.

It's pretty minimal at the moment.

- But I think we're starting to process a little more beef every year in the state.

You don't inspect that, Mike?

- [Mike] Yes, we do.

- You do?

- Yes.

So, we have two levels of inspection.

There's the USDA facilities and then there's also state-inspected facilities within Montana that we do with the Department of Livestock.

All total, we have still less than 50 of those facilities in Montana, and they're very small in comparison to the large processors you see in other parts of the country.

We probably process in state, at this point, roughly about 5% of the cattle we produce that tells you that 95% of it ends up being processed somewhere else.

Now, a lot of that comes back to our marketplace- - [Jack] Sure.

- After processing, so it's kind of hard to say how much of it comes back, but we are still a large export state in consideration of the beef business.

- Okay, thank you.

Abi, this person sees a lot of centipedes when they rototill their garden.

They're worried about: Are they bad for the garden or not?

- I love this question.

They're not bad for your garden.

So, centipedes are amazing generalist predators.

They eat lots of little soft-bodied insects and also a lot of larval insects in the soil.

So they help keep your pest populations under control and they're an awesome thing to see in your garden.

So, keep taking care of those centipedes.

- They're kind of creepy, though.

- They are a little creepy, but maybe they think that about us, too.

- That's rightly so.

- Yeah.

- So, what's the difference between a centipede and a millipede?

- Oh, I'm really glad you asked, Jack.

- I'm sorry I did.

- So, yeah.

So the difference between them is not 100 legs versus 1,000 legs, it's the number of legs per body segment.

So, centipedes have one pair or two total legs per body segment and millipedes have two pairs or four legs per body segment.

- [Jane] They're even creepier.

(guests laughing) - I think it's got more leg, more creep factor that we often have with a lot of critters.

- Okay.

A little different question here for Mike.

We've been talking mainly about livestock, but this person would like to adopt shelter pets, and they're wondering do they have to be vaccinated?

What are the rules of adopting a shelter pets?

And maybe I think they're referring to from out of state.

- Yes.

So, there are requirements for those animals that are coming in from out of state to comply with our import regulations and the testing that is required.

Oftentimes, that requires knowing those animals are rabies-free.

There's other tests that we may require given what's happening at the present time.

I know, within the last few years, we had an incident with Brucella canis, which is a dog version of brucellosis, and some other diseases that we're spreading in shelters.

And so without that pretesting before they come in, they pose a danger to the other pets that you might have around your place.

And with some things like Brucella canis, it can even pose some small human health risk.

So, I would just look at those requirements, make sure those animals had an import certificate and been tested properly before they come to the state of Montana.

- [Abi] Mike.

- Yeah, go ahead.

- So, Mike, a lot of people may not know that honeybees are also livestock.

What are the rules and regulations about transporting honeybees across state lines, especially because of those pollination services?

We move them around the country quite a bit.

- Yes, there's import certifications that have to be complied with.

The Department of Agriculture is responsible for the apiary laws within the state of Montana.

So they would be a good resource for people to know what they need to do before they bring those bees into the state of Montana, as well as our Animal Health Department to make sure that they've complied with their import requirements.

- [Abi] Thank you.

- We've had several questions.

I'm not gonna say where they're all from.

They would like to know the current status of bird flu in the state.

- Yes, so we have come through a full circle a little bit with high-path avian influenza, the bird flu.

Over the last couple of years, we had a lot of issues in wild birds two to three years ago.

And it seemed like every season that the Flyway was active, either birds heading north or heading south.

We would see an uptick in those cases in domestic poultry and backyard poultry around the state of Montana.

We did euthanize a couple of hundred thousand birds as a result of their infection with high-path avian influenza.

As I mentioned earlier, there were some cases in the country where high-path avian influenza had made a species jump into dairy cattle.

That did not happen in Montana, but we were surveilling milk to make sure our milk was free of high-path avian influenza.

But largely this year, and I'll knock on wood when I say that, it has died down from where it was several years ago.

But we typically expect every couple of years to see a new strain of bird flu sort of show up and show up in the wild birds.

And then, we have incidents in the domestic birds they come in contact with.

- So, how would a flock of chickens or turkeys interact with wild birds?

That's always fascinating me.

I mean, they fly over.

How's that interaction take place?

- Well, largely with a lot of backyard flocks, people allow those birds to have access to the outside.

So, if you've had ducks, or geese, or other migratory birds coming through your yard, they'll come in contact with waste from these species or share water sources with these species around your property.

As far as with the domestic, typically it's usually because of some lapse in biosecurity.

We, as humans, will have some interaction with a viral load that comes from those migratory birds and then we take it into the facility.

And then, once they become sick, it becomes pretty apparent what's going on.

- Okay, thank you.

I have noticed that egg prices have moderated considerably.

No doubt about that.

I haven't forgotten that other piece of whatever you call it there.

Last week, I called it garbage, but this time, we'll refer to it as a weed.

What is the other one there?

- Well, it is kind of garbage.

So, this is... The other plant I brought in tonight is bulbous bluegrass.

It's a short-lived perennial bunch grass.

These are nice demonstration, it grows in a bunch.

This is one plant with multiple stems.

And it seems like we're having a good year for bulbous bluegrass this year.

It's not great livestock forage.

It has a lot of small leaves down low that dry out very quickly, and then it flowers.

And it's kind of an interesting plant because instead of grass is producing seeds, it actually produces what are called bulbouls.

It's just so fun to say, bulbouls.

And they're actually like... It's a different biology than a seed.

They're actually little immature kind of baby grass plants.

And if you look at one close, you can see that it's just like two little leaves coming out of that bulboul, and those drop to the ground and they're ready to grow right away.

There's no dormant seed.

The other thing that's noticeable about this plant where the name bulbous bluegrass comes from is the base of the roots.

There's a bulb there, looks kind of like an onion, or... Yeah, like an onion.

This isn't the greatest example.

There should be a photo, there's a great photo that's the base of the plant with the bulbs at the base.

So this is kind of... I mean, it could be considered an invasive grass.

It doesn't have a lot of value to it.

It matures early and it's just kind of a weedy garbage grass, like you would say, Jack, and I've been getting quite a few questions about it this year already.

The one thing I wanna say about this growth where it is right now is like you would not wanna come along and mow this off right now because all you're doing is scattering those... - [Abi] The bulbouls.

- Baby plants, the bulbouls.

The best time to manage this really would've been a month ago or even six weeks ago when the bases were first starting to green up, and so really, if your bulbous bluegrass is at this growth stage right now, you just kind of have to sit on it until either a fall treatment or a spring treatment.

And then, of course, it likes to invade pastures.

It's often growing on the edge of pastures and then kind of starts moving into the center.

Good pasture management and good fertilization and irrigation, if you have the option, is a good way to combat this grass.

- [Jack] Okay, thank you.

- Yep.

- And that's the last bulbous bluegrass question of the year.

- [Jane] Yes, hopefully.

Yeah.

- Yeah, that's fair range and fire black once we do that - [Jane] We gotta do field bindweed.

- Oh, we got that last week.

- [Jane] We got that.

Okay, good, good.

- Yeah, we tricked him with that one.

- [Jane] Okay, good.

- Sam, this person hears that we have a lot of wildlife cattle and sheep interactions in the state, negative interactions.

Is there any way that that can be minimized or avoided?

They'd like to know.

- Yeah, so I know like FWP has some programs, so like one of the big concerns I hear about is elk coming in and decimating haystacks, and so I know FWP has some programs.

They can help, I believe, fence those off.

I don't know, you probably are more aware of what those programs look like.

Kind of talked about it a little bit earlier, but brucellosis is also a potential issue.

And so some of the elk herds that migrate in and out of Yellowstone that have come in contact with the bison that may be containing some of the brucellosis that can be transmitted to cattle outside the park.

And so a lot of that actually happens through reproductive tracked placenta stuff from calving.

And so like one of the big mitigation factors there is to make sure maybe your spring grazing turnout area isn't where elk are calving, especially if you're within the designated surveillance area and where you have high potential brucellosis.

There's a whole slew of things.

I know some states, I don't know if Montana does this, has some hazing programs to try to haze some of the wildlife out of fields and especially if they're forage crops and stuff like that.

I'm sure you know more about these than I do, so I'll pass to you, I guess.

- Yeah, well, there's obviously, from what Sam said earlier, in Southwest Montana, there's those concerns about the resident elk that we have that carry brucellosis and making sure they stay away from cattle during that risk period.

So anything you can do to manage and keep the elk away from where the cattle are gonna be, that does lessen the opportunity for the spread of brucellosis and into the cattle herd.

As far as general livestock wildlife management conflict, just as past week at Department of Livestock, we approved through the Livestock Loss Board, giving out about $100,000 to folks for taking measures to mitigate conflicts with predators primarily.

So, electric fencing, fence widening, range riders, a lot of techniques to manage livestock, wildlife conflict, a little bit different than the elk conflict, or bighorn sheep conflict with coming into contact with domestic sheep.

But, there are a lot of grant programs and other things out there, and good ideas from specialists, particularly in fish wildlife and parks, about how to mitigate those conflicts.

- Okay, so people are aware of it, and there's no doubt, and there are, as you say, good programs that help reduce that risk.

From Clyde Park, this one fascinates me.

Can we get or have an update on issues with ticks on cattle?

Are ranchers having more problems this year due to the mild winter?

And I wasn't aware that ticks are a big issue on cattle.

Are they?

- Yes.

Yeah, largely nationally.

Cattle tick fever was one of the biggest animal health issues, particularly emanating out of Texas, that the cattle industry had to deal with, and there has been lots of programs about making sure those ticks don't spread from areas further south in the United States up to Montana.

It's a risk that's been managed pretty well for Montana.

Now, as far as our native tick population, we do worry about those cattle fever ticks, which pretty much originate out of the Southern Plains part of the United States.

We do worry about those becoming transported up to Montana, but that's not an issue we've really dealt with.

And we've really had good programs for making sure that doesn't happen as far... I'm not as familiar with native tick species, about what their prevalence is currently or any challenges they might have.

So Sam might speak to that a little better.

- Yeah, I haven't heard of a ton of tick problems in Montana.

I know, like you said, from a national standpoint, in the Southern Plains, I've also heard quite a few people talk about, I believe it's tularemia in Southeast and Eastern United States where there's huge heavy tick loads.

Several different species of ticks that I didn't even know existed until I was there and seen them.

But yeah, in Montana I don't think there's anything outside of the general right now that I know of.

And then, like I said, like general management, we do some pour on treatments and stuff of our cattle to try to mitigate parasite loads in general.

And so I think the height of the tick season probably happens about the time when we're actually treating animals anyway.

So, I haven't heard of a lot of negative impacts of ticks in Montana.

- We were tracking, I wanna say it was the Longhorn tick for quite a while that was coming from the East Coast out this direction and not gotten this far West.

So I didn't know if the Montana Invasive Species Council from their national counterparts (indistinct).

- [Jack] Deer tick.

- [Abi] The blacklegged deer tick.

- [Jack] Yeah.

Yeah.

- [Abi] Yeah.

- [Jack] I think they found it in Glendive last year.

- [Abi] Yeah, I believe they have two records of that.

Yeah.

- Okay.

Change tune a little bit from Shepherd.

They had a hailstorm a year ago.

The deciduous trees seem to be slow to recover compared to the conifers.

Do they need to be concerned, or do you have any suggestions what they might do?

- Yeah, so it would be good to know a little bit more about what they mean by slow to recover.

But anytime there is a stressor that affects trees, like hailstorm, that has the potential to slow down growth.

And it also, with hail, it can open up wounds inside trees that can be an entryway for pathogens like bacteria.

So, I would make sure to investigate and see that you're not seeing any symptoms of disease, and if not, then I'd implement those general tree care practices.

So, it's been a really dry winter, which could be impacting your deciduous and evergreen trees equally because even though the above ground parts are usually dormant, the root systems aren't always dormant.

And with our soils having been as warm as they have for as long as they have, make sure that they're getting plenty of water and a nice deep soaking of water, and then reducing any other stressors.

So, if you have turf grass surrounding the root system of trees, maybe add a layer of wood chip mulch around it so the turf isn't competing with those trees for moisture and nutrients.

And if it looks like your trees are struggling, don't add any fertilizer 'cause that can encourage more leafy green growth, as opposed to the tree kind of hanging on there and putting its energy into root establishment and survival.

So, I would say to take good care of your tree care practices, but observe for any signs of disease.

And if you're seeing anything out of the ordinary, reach out to your Extension Agent to investigate further.

- All right, thank you.

From Missoula.

I'll let either Sam or Mike take this.

Is it illegal to serve horse meat in the United States?

- Yes.

Horse slaughter has been illegal in the United States now for, I wanna say about 20 years since it was... since it was banned.

And that has created some challenges for horses.

It took a market out for some horses that people maybe couldn't care for or horses that had gotten to the point where they needed to be euthanized.

Those markets had been really good.

There is still horse slaughter in Canada, and there is still a large number of horses from the United States that are bought and exported to Canada for horse slaughter.

Largely, that's for European markets is where that's going for.

But we do not have horse slaughter here and I don't believe there's any prospect for a change in that policy anytime in the near future.

- Yeah, I don't have anything to add.

That basically covered everything I knew, so.

- Okay, while you're up, Sam, this person says that he has heard on this program several times that we're producing less cattle but more meat.

How does that work?

- Yeah, so I mean genetics is a big one.

So, like I said, Montana is one of the leaders in genetic for beef cattle.

And so, we've gotten really good at growing, being more efficient, growing more beef on an animal with lower inputs.

And so as inventory goes down over the last few decades, we've actually seen an increase.

A lot of that also has to do with our feed yards and the science behind those, and being able to efficiently grow cattle to be bigger, higher quality, have better systems of moving commodity feed sources in and out, and getting everything dialed in.

So, we're just able to produce beef, I guess you could say, incredibly efficiently, and to be able to do it with lower numbers than previous decades.

- Mind-boggling stat is that we are at the lowest cattle herd inventory we've been at since the 1960s, but we're projected to produce just under 26 billion pounds of beef this year, which is largely the same amount of beef we've produced in the '60s and '70s with... Well, quite a few more cattle.

So it's amazing what the animal has been able to do and what genetics has been able to do.

- So, we touched on this a couple times and I have a question for you in a minute.

Are we exporting that much beef that it raises our prices?

You guys deal in that every day.

I've had a couple questions.

Recently, we've tried to export beef to China.

Would that raise our prices?

- Yeah, I would say that it probably... It would raise prices for producers as far as domestic prices.

Probably not.

A lot of our export markets, we're sending different products.

than what we really eat here in the United States.

One of the things we're really desperately short on the US right now is lean trim for making ground beef.

And that's probably... We've got a historically low supply, so that's why people have seen really, really big increases in ground beef.

And a lot of the trade policies have been talked about, about increasing imports, say from South America is about solving that lean trim problem.

But largely for the US market, what our consumers have a taste for is typically different than what our export customers.

So it really helps the producer to have robust export markets 'cause it allows us to market things that we probably would never be able to market or use efficiently here in the US, but find good value for that elsewhere in the world.

- [Jack] Okay, makes sense.

- We are really good at producing a When you look at carcass quality of these animals, not only do we produce a lot of it efficiently, we produce some of the highest quality carcasses in the world.

And so a lot of that beef is actually going into restaurants or high-end retail stores, things like that, maybe some butcher shops, stuff like that.

The stuff you see in the general grocery stores, exactly like what Mike was saying, is we need the lean trim to mix in with that 'cause our beef, a lot of times, just has too high a fat content.

So we need to mix that in with a leaner... and get that leaner beef in that.

So I don't know that exporting to China is gonna impact that too terribly much, but... - So I want to throw a question to both of you, we're running a little long time, so it won't take a lot of time with this.

You can buy 93/7, 85/15, 73/27 ground beef.

Which makes the best hamburger on the grill?

(Jack and guests laughing) - That's a matter of taste.

And I can tell you, and also a matter of how much you wanna have left when you're done cooking with it, right, because of how much fat might be in there.

But that's a matter of taste, whether you like it a little juicier, tastier, or like it a little leaner.

- Yeah, yeah, or how much you want to be able to put that fire out in your grill as the fat leaks out.

So, I personally kind of like it.

For a burger, I kind of like the leaner stuff.

I don't like the real thick greasy stuff, but I know a lot of guys who do.

So, yeah, to me, there's no bad... - [Jack] Bad burger.

- Bad burger, it's just... Yeah, exactly like Mike said, it's just whatever your personal preference is.

- Okay, okay, I had to throw that in.

Jane, we're running low, but I've had two or three calls.

Can you pull bulbous bluegrass?

- Oh, you can.

I mean, I pulled this up.

It just depends how much you have.

If you don't have very much and it's headed out like this, by all means, pull it and bag it, and put it in the garbage.

- [Jack] How does it spread?

- [Jane] These bulbouls?

- Okay.

- Yep, they just get scattered all over the place.

It doesn't really spread creeping wise, like the whitetop does.

- [Jack] Is it very competitive?

- Yeah, it has its years where it's super competitive.

This is one of them, I think.

- [Jack] All right.

- Yeah.

- Comment from Billings, and I should have said this earlier, we do like comments, but I do screen them.

If they're negative, I don't use them.

Comment on identifying plants.

Caller uses an app on the phone, just a suggestion for people to help ID plants.

And does that work pretty good?

- Yeah, one thing I'll say is we've looked at different ones.

PictureThis is one of the better apps, but it can get you kind of in the ballpark, but don't rely on it exclusively.

- All right.

Folks, we're done for another evening.

I want to thank Sam, Mike, thanks for coming down from Helena.

We enjoyed you.

You did a great job.

Of course, Jane, our weed scientist, is always good.

Abi, thank you.

And next week, two weeks, Michelle Waddell, Director of the Tourism Department, will be here.

Have a good night.

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