(upbeat instrumental music) (upbeat instrumental music continues) - Good morning, everyone, and welcome to SUNUP.

I'm Kurtis Hair.

Well, we're coming to you today from Grady County where we're taking a look at how the wheat crop is progressing through the state, and we'll have more later on in the show.

But first, Alex Rocateli has some advice from the producers here at growing Bermuda grass pastures.

(acoustic chords playing) - Well, it's coming, the time of the year that Bermuda grass pasture finally start to green up.

And yes, last year was a very unfortunate year for Bermuda grass pastures because we have a severe drought, statewide, I can say.

So, now some producers might be looking at their Bermuda grass pastures and say, "Man, those Bermuda grass pastures are damaged.

What I supposed to do?"

Well, there are some management that we can do to try to revamp those pastures.

For instance, if you see that your pasture was light damaged, less than 30% damaged.

What I mean, 70% of the area is covered by Bermuda grass, and 30% is not.

Well, your pasture was light damaged, and most likely that what you need is to do a good weed control program and also a proper fertilization.

What I mean is, according to the soil samples, you may go there and apply right now phosphorous and potassium if you didn't apply yet.

And after full green up it starts to apply nitrogen.

Where we may apply 50 pounds of actual nitrogen for every expected ton of forage during the season.

Let those pastures grow, the Bermuda grass grow, until it starts to reach flowering.

And at that moment you can go there and start grazing or go there and cut.

Keep in mind, that will take six to eight weeks, and during that time do a grazing or a cutting that's gonna be about three inch height stubble in the end.

If your pasture has medium damage, about 30 to 60% damage, I mean, 30 to 60% of the area is not covered with Bermuda grass.

Well, keep with a good weed control, however, now we can think about supplemental fertilization.

What I mean is, you may apply phosphorous and potassium according to the soil analysis, however, an extra 20 pounds of P2O5, phosphorous, per acre, might be beneficial to develop better roots, especially during early seasons, so those plants can start to take up more of the nitrogen then you're gonna provide after green up.

And of course, keep a good grazing and hay management, the same way that you are doing for the light damaged pastures.

Now finally, if you have a pasture that was severe damaged, the damage is higher than 60%.

In other words, more than half of your pasture doesn't have Bermuda grasses growing anymore.

Well, it's even hard to think about worth to reseed the pasture or not.

And in this case supplemental fertilization, good weed control, it's essential.

And now comes the catch.

If you are reseeding that very severe damaged pasture, well, better that you treat that as Bermuda grass in a establishment year.

That grazing's gonna occur just later after two, three months.

So that will give time for these new seedlings come up, develop at least three inches runners that's gonna be well anchored in the soil, so the cattle can go there and graze without damaging the new stand that's coming up.

If a drought occurs, I would say, do not fertilize, especially, do not place any nitrogen there.

Because if we are in a drought, most likely the Bermuda grass will start to flower because that's what it does.

"Oh, I don't have water, let me flower and stop growing."

And at that moment all the nitrogen that we're place on that soil.

We just feed the weeds that will continue growing under that real harsh environment.

So do not fertilize.

If the drought hits when the Bermuda grass is about six or eight inches height, I think the worth to go there, hay or even graze, but keep that three or even four inches stubble height.

Now, if a drought occurs right after a cut, and you have about four to five inches of growth, and it starts to flower, just leave the Bermuda grass alone.

And finally, when you talk about weed control, during a drought continue doing your weed control.

Most likely that we may think, "Well, I'm not taking any forage this year from this pasture, so I don't wanna invest on herbicides."

Well, if you let those weeds really run wild and grow all around, next year's what is gonna be much more difficult to control, and in the end you're gonna be spend much more with weed control and herbicides.

(gentle upbeat music) If you want more details on recovering Bermuda grass pastures after a drought, we have a fact sheet that even has a method for help you to assess the damage.

To find the fact sheet and the nearest county office just go to the SUNUP website.

(gentle folk music) - [Kurtis] With the recent devastating tornadoes in Pottawatomie, McClain, and several other Oklahoma counties.

- [Narrator] We wanna remind you of our emergency and disaster preparedness page on our OSU extension website.

Here we have materials for natural disaster recovery for those affected by these storms.

Whether it's avoiding deadly hazards after a disaster, or assistance for those needing relief, you can find it all right here.

We also have materials regarding emergency preparedness that will be useful during the storm season.

For a link to this page, just go to sunup.okstate.edu.

(bright upbeat music) - Hello Wes Lee here and welcome to the Mesonet Weather Report.

With weeks of limited rainfall, the West continues in a severe multi-year drought and even in the East things are drying out.

On this map of 16 inch percent plant available water, you can see the driest areas in red and some worsening areas in the yellows.

Things need to change soon as we are quickly approaching what is usually the wettest time of year in Oklahoma.

On average, the month of May is the biggest contributor to the statewide annual rainfall total.

Just remember a year ago, when late May rains temporarily relieved drought conditions almost statewide.

While May is the wettest month statewide that doesn't always hold true for individual locations.

In the East, the heaviest rains tend to come a little earlier as seen here for Sallisaw, where the wettest day on this 15 year average graph was April 30th.

For Central Oklahoma, like here in Spencer the wettest day of the year is usually mid to late May.

This graph indicates May 20th as the peak on this long-term average graph.

West Central is not far off with the wettest day at Eric, also being May 20th.

However, out in the Panhandle, the radius month is usually in July as seen here for Kenton.

Let's hope the rainy period begins soon.

Gary's up next with the newest drought map.

- Thanks Wes, and good morning everyone.

Well, today we're gonna take a look at the newest drought monitor map, but keep in mind any rainfall that's fall on after 7:00 AM on Tuesday will be accounted for on next week's drought monitor map.

So hopefully we do have some changes in store next week.

Well, all we have really to change for this week would be worsening.

We have more of that D4 Exceptional Drought across Northern Oklahoma, we have a little bit more now in Southwest Oklahoma, and we've also increased the D3 Extreme Drought in other parts of the state.

So just an increase now, one thing to look for is an increase in the abnormally dry conditions over into East Central Oklahoma just a little bit past Central Oklahoma.

So that's a change for the worst.

Hopefully, some rain this week will stop that out before it gets started in the full fledged drought.

Okay, let's take a look at the seasonal outlooks from the Cloud Prediction Center.

This is for the May through July timeframe.

For temperature, we see increased odds of above normal temperatures across the entire state of Oklahoma but especially across the southwestern corner of the state.

Certainly not good news if this actually comes to fruition across the state.

Nobody in Oklahoma wants a hotter than normal summer, so not good news there especially for any drought conditions we still have.

Now for precipitation, basically we see increased odds of a little bit of below normal precipitation but that's mainly confined over into the southwestern corner of the state up in the Panhandle.

Okay, for the seasonal drought outlook, unfortunately, we continue to see for all of Oklahoma where drought currently exists that drought is expected to persist through the end of July.

Again, not good news.

We hope for a better outlook from the Cloud Prediction Center, but again, this could change so we always have that hope.

That's it for this time we'll see a next time on the Mesonet Weather Report.

- Now we take a look to see what makes Tammy Lee a 2022 OSU distinguished alumni.

- I didn't grow up in production agriculture.

I grew up what you would call a a rural ranchette kind of out in the country, but it was so nice to get to actually grow up and understand both where your food comes from, how to take care of the land, how to be a good steward of the environment, how to take care of nature.

- [Interviewer] Tammy Lee's parents grew nearly every fruit and vegetable you could grow in Oklahoma.

- I was one of those spoiled and fortunate kids that my mother canned everything from peaches to jellies and jams.

Even making our, made our own butter 'cause we had dairy cows for a while as well.

- [Interviewer] The Lees also had a lot of horses.

All of Tammy's family participated in different rodeo events for Tammy and her siblings, it was a great way to spend the summer weekends.

For her mother, it was an opportunity to teach her children always to do their best.

- Didn't matter if you were mucking the stalls, if you were sweeping the floor, if you were running a company, if you were going to the rodeo, you had to be the best version of yourself no matter what your job was, and no matter what you're trying to accomplish.

At the time as most junior high kids do, play basketball for the school.

- And I was kind of laser focused on Oklahoma State because of their animal science program.

So I think I started writing letters to them somewhere around seventh or eighth grade, trying to get their attention.

- [Narrator] While she never played college basketball, she was accepted into the OSU Animal Science Program.

- I kind of stood out over in the animal science side of the world just because there wasn't anybody else there that looked like me, but I felt so welcomed from the entire department, the staff, from my colleagues, from my peers throughout Oklahoma State, it was awesome.

- [Narrator] Tammy's original plan was to be a veterinarian but a professor encouraged her to intern with John Deere between her junior and senior years, it was a perfect fit.

She graduated in 1995 and the company immediately hired her.

She's currently working as a marketing manager for John Deere.

- The background that I was able to get from Oklahoma State enabled me to be able to have those deeper level conversations with customers, and that has been invaluable throughout my career.

- [Narrator] Tammy is still loyal and true to her alma mater.

In addition to strengthening the corporate ties to John Deere, Tammy has served on the Oklahoma State Excellence in Diversity Board, and the OSU Foundation Board of Governors, and she established the Lee Family Scholarship - But she's never forgotten her roots both in Jones and her family and in OSU, and she's been extremely generous with her resources, supporting scholarships for students, to help make sure that other students have the kind of opportunities that she had when she came here.

- I was a scholarship recipient, and I know how much it meant kind of growing up in rural Oklahoma to not only get into the place you wanted to to get into, to go to school, but then also to have those scholarships that helped you get there.

- [Narrator] Tammy was also the MC for an OSU Ag Special Event.

- Well good afternoon, Cowboys.

(audience applauds) The groundbreaking at the New Frontier Ceremony, was a highlight for me as an alumni.

I couldn't believe they chose me.

- [Narrator] Tammy became a New Frontiers Major Gift Donor, and named the Rodeo Coordinator Office after her mother.

- The idea of being able to do something in honor of my mother, who had done so much for me to help me get to college and then actually get through college, gosh, it's hard to even think about that.

It's hard to even think about not having her here, but being able to leave something for her.

- [Narrator] Celebrating Tammy Lee, 2022 Ferguson College of Agriculture Distinguished Alumni.

(upbeat music) - I'm Kim Anderson, and this is Tailgate Talk on "Market Monitor."

Not much going on in the crop and cotton markets this week.

You look at the forward contract prices for '23, wheat up in the Pond Creek Medford area, around $8.50.

It fell off just a little bit at the end of the week.

If you go to the panhandle, you can add a dime or so to that, for eight and a quarter.

Go down in I40, Weatherford area, take off about 15 cents for $8 weight.

And if you go down to Snyder and Altus, you'll need to take off about 30 cents or around $7.85 a bushel.

Corn for 2023 harvest delivery around $5.40.

Oh, we picked up 10 or 15 cents on corn this week.

Go down to beans.

It's just been flat.

For bean prices not to move much is unusual, but there's just not much going on in those markets, at $12.30.

In the news is Russia, Russia's always stirring things up.

You look at their exports, Russia has a significant amount of wheat in storage that they need to move on that export market.

And of course they're always messing with that Ukraine-Russian export agreement.

They stopped inspecting ships for several days, they resumed in the latter part of this week.

And naturally that's going to have some impact on our prices because it increases the risk, and when you increase risk, you increase price a little bit.

Big news around this area is the drought.

You look at Hard Red Winter Wheat across all your crops, I did a weighted average on that crop condition for all Hard Red Winter Wheat, about 38% is in the poor to very poor conditions, but that's compared to 42% at harvest last year.

Kansas, 61%, poor to very poor.

Oklahoma, 46%, now that's down slightly.

It was around 46 or 47% last year.

Texas at 47%, poor to very poor.

They were 82% last year.

So better crop conditions in Texas, slightly more acres.

And so if you're looking at crop production for the next marketing year, last year, Oklahoma only produced 67 million bushels, with a 95 million bushel average.

I think we could possibly have 75, 80 at the most, million bushels this year for Oklahoma.

Texas last year only had 39 million bushels, with a 70 million bushel average.

You've got an increase in 9% acres in Texas, and remember last year.

- It was 82% poured a very poor compared to in the forties this year.

So you got better wheat in Texas and higher production.

The yields are gonna be down.

There's some people that are hurting for certain.

And thank God for crop insurance and that relatively high crop insurance price.

I'm Kim Anderson.

We'll see you next week on Market Monitor.

(upbeat music) - Good morning, Oklahoma, and welcome to Cow-Calf Corner.

I'm Mark Johnson, and this week's topic is that tough environments call for tough cows.

That's the topic of our Ranchers Lunchtime Series on April 6th, the day I got the opportunity to interview James Henderson from Bradley Three R Ranch in Memphis, Texas.

It was an interesting conversation that day and it has a lot of bearing on where we're at right now in this business, as we've dealt with prolonged drought.

In Oklahoma we've liquidated a lot of cows and a lot of us are going to be repopulating with cows at some point in the future.

And so that opportunity to talk to James Henderson provided a lot of insight into what they do at Bradley Three Ranch.

And in particular, when asked why they go about their selection process the way they do, he said most of their bull-buying customers are running cows in that same kind of environment, and it makes sense (wind blowing) for them to hold their cows accountable to adapting to that environment the way they do.

The way he described the environment, I would categorize as follows.

First, those cows have gotta be capable of dealing with extreme variation in temperatures.

In a typical year they run from negative 10 to 123 degrees Fahrenheit.

Those cows have to get a long ways to water and the water that they've got smells bad and tastes bad, as James describes it, and is high in nitrates and high in sulfates.

We've got an environment there with a lot of noxious weeds and poisonous plants.

We've got an environment that is overrun with predators, that those cows have to be able to adapt to.

And so as we look at that part of the world in a production environment, where about 600 cows are running on about 16,000 acres, the kind of cow that he described that works for them or the standards that they hold those cows to is described as follows.

Basically, it takes an athletic type of cow that can cover large and long distances in order to get enough forage and actually get to water.

(wind blowing) It takes a cow that is not overly big.

He says that their average Angus mature weight is about 1,195 pounds.

The average Charolais cow (cow mooing) is weighing close to 1400 pounds.

But in either case, in either breed, if we take a look at those Angus cows, those cows are bringing in a calf each year and weaning off over 50% of that mature weight.

So we're still looking at 600-pound calves coming off those cows that aren't weighing quite 1200 themselves.

The mature size in the Charolais herds, closer to 1400, said those cows will wean off about 48 to 50%, and again, are expected to wean off a calf every year.

They average an 86% calf crop wean.

They compare that to a national average of about 78%.

And James said that the key to getting those cows to function in that environment and be capable of handling that environment is to hold 'em accountable.

Let a little bit of natural selection take place so that only the cows that are capable of dealing with all that and avoiding the poisonous plants and surviving on that water source are gonna be the ones that manage to wean a calf and get bred for you, in that 365-day window every year.

As we move forward, and a lot of us think about taking on inventory and repopulating cow herds, run your ranching operation like a business, hold those cows accountable, make sure that they fit your production environment, whatever that may be, and that they've got the genetics to fit your marketing endpoint.

And again, Mr. Henderson brought up that they do that at Bradley Three Ranch because that's the environment that most of those bull customers are gonna expect their cows to survive in as well.

I think there's an important message there on holding cows accountable and making sure that they fit our production environment.

As I always say, I hope this helps.

(wind blowing) There's a lot of points to consider there.

You can actually visit the website on the screen (upbeat music) and look at that interview with James Henderson as well as the entire Ranchers Lunchtime Series in dealing with dry conditions.

Thanks for joining us this week on Cow-Calf Corner.

- You know, I-44 really has been the dividing line between the haves and havenots, and today we're meeting a producer who's seeing a little bit of both.

(steps crunching) - There's our old garden seed counter over there.

- [Narrator] It's hard for Steve Calhoun to walk through Ross Seed Company and not be jolted with memories.

- And you can come in here and buy one scoop of cucumbers (drawer scraping) for a dollar and a quarter.

- [Narrator] But working for 50 years in the same shop will do that to you.

Steve.

- [Narrator] Who now manages the seed company, spends his days with paperwork and giving guidance to fellow producers who have questions about their operations.

- Mr. Calhoun.

- (indistinct) What are you up to?

- Well, I've waited about a week to plant some of that (indistinct).

- Let's wait a week or so and see.

The only thing I'm concerned about, it's still a little cool.

I'd like you to wait.

They're talkin' like we might get some rain.

- Yeah.

- I'd like for you to wait another week or two, if you could.

- Okay, I can.

- Alright.

- [Narrator] And Steve knows all about waitin' on the rain.

Aside from his day job at Ross Seed Company, Steve is a cattle and wheat producer.

He says one verb that would best describe how his wheat crop is doing right now: "teetering."

- Well, right now it's in pretty good shape.

We had about an inch of rain here a month ago and it really helped it out, but we haven't had any rain since.

And so it's kinda startin' to get a blue cast to it, which is a stress-type situation.

We're hopin' we may get some rain this week, there's a possibility, because we're concerned about the test weight and filling it out.

Well, really, we kinda had a pretty good crop last year.

This field that I'm standing in, last year, of course it's bottomland, but it made 70 bushel, and I was very pleased.

I had some upland wheat that didn't do very well.

It made about 20 bushel.

So you can kinda see the difference, the drought.

So we're startin' to deal with that again this year.

- Some of the fields look pretty good.

Some of 'em are really stressed, struggling.

They probably are not gonna make any yield at all.

- [Narrator] Denise Wood is the Grady County OSU Extension ag educator.

She says how the crop is looking in the county right now really depends on which side of Highway 44 you're on.

- Especially in certain areas, I mean, we need rain all across Grady County, but we were in, like, Minco, eight inches behind the curve there on the drought conditions.

So lookin' at eight inches when you're dealing with a crop is pretty drastic.

- The field of Steve's we just saw looks pretty good.

But come a few miles west of I-44, you can really see how stressed this crop is.

- Don't get me wrong.

We're blessed.

We're on that line.

You go west of here, and these people are really hurtin', sufferin'.

Mark Johnson come and talk to us about the cattle situation, and the ponds are dryin' up out west.

We're in a little bit better shape than they are.

We're not great, but we're in better shape than they are further to the west of us.

- [Narrator] Although Steve is grateful for the condition his crop is currently in, if it doesn't rain here in the next few days, decisions will have to be made.

- If we don't get a rain this week, we'll probably be lookin' at something else.

We were lookin' at this field a little earlier, and it's startin' to put a head out.

So if we do it for hay, we're gonna have to do it pretty quick.

- [Narrator] But regardless, when you've been farming as long as Steve has, you try not to focus too much on the negatives.

If the sky doesn't cry soon, well, at least he'll have some hay for his cattle.

You take what you can get.

That's farmin'.

- You know, farmin' is an up and down deal.

One year it's completely- And you really can't judge it from one year to the next.

You just gotta take it year by year.

It's gotta be in your blood.

It is.

My family's been farmin' for over a hundred years.

And so anyway, it's gotta be in your blood.

(upbeat music) - Finally, in just a few days here in Grady County will be the Chickasha Wheat Field Day.

For more details on that and upcoming field days, here's Dr. Damona Doye.

- Well, it's officially spring, so we're looking forward to field days to welcome producers to variety trials to learn more about the latest OSU research.

We'll have opportunities for our specialists and researchers to talk about the new varieties that have emerged.

We'll look at differences in different locations, about how different varieties have performed.

So, every year the weather circumstances are different, in different locations we have different soils, and so seeing how different varieties perform in different areas is really important.

It's an opportunity for producers to have conversations with the researchers and Extension specialists about what they've observed, what's important in their location.

We have field days coming up both at Tipton and Chickasha, so we look forward to seeing people on April 26th in Tipton and April 28th in Chickasha.

We'll have more field days coming up later this summer, so we encourage you to watch for information through your local county Extension office, or check out the SUNUP website.

We look forward to seeing you there.

- And that about wraps it up for us today.

Now remember, if you saw somethin' on the show that you liked, you can go to our website, sunup.okstate.edu, or follow us on YouTube and social media.

I'm Kurtis Hair, and remember, Oklahoma agriculture starts at SUNUP.

(upbeat music)