(bright upbeat music) - Hello everyone and welcome to "Sunup."

I'm Lyndall Stout.

The sound of the rain falling is definitely music to our ears across Oklahoma, knowing that it will make a difference in wheat fields across the state.

Gary McManus and Wesley will tell us how much of an impact the rain is having a little bit later in the Mesonet Report.

But first we're talking about Vitamin A deficiency in cattle with Dr. Dave Lalman.

- The rain is gonna help a lot because it's gonna green up the forage and you know, obviously, we hope we grow a substantial amount of forage for grazing.

And green forage supplies carotene, which is the precursor to Vitamin A.

You know, we've been in a drought in western part of Oklahoma, really since about September of 2021.

Sure, we had some periods of rainfall last spring, a year ago, but then it turned off dry immediately.

And any time forage gets mature and a drought comes along, the carotene concentration in forage declines dramatically.

So we've had long periods of time in Western Oklahoma where cattle would've been consuming forage that was likely low in carotene and therefore low in, or they should have been low in terms of their requirement of active Vitamin A.

- Tell us about the case study that you and the team have done the past few weeks on OSU's herds.

- Yeah, so some of the veterinarians were telling us that, you know, they were seeing, they were testing cattle for Vitamin A in the serum and they were finding a lot of cattle that were deficient.

So we decided to test one of our cow herds, the fall calving herd.

And turns out, you know the adequate serum concentration of Vitamin A is presumed to be about 0.3 parts per million.

Our cows tested on average 0.12.

So you know, nearly 1/3 of what they needed to have, you know, for their different biological functions.

And so we soon after that we got those cows in and we gave them a Vitamin A injection.

Tested 'em about two weeks later.

And during that time period, in the interim, we also increased the Vitamin A supplement in the feed that they were consuming.

- If a Vitamin A deficiency lingers there can be really some potential serious problems, right?

- There could be.

And you know what you would expect, and some of the veterinarians are indicating they've seen is early births, stillborns, weak calves, and retain placenta.

- Is testing the only way you can really know if there is a deficiency?

- I mean, it's certainly the best way.

Sure, you might observe some of these problems, the stillborns, and early borne calves, and weak calves, and things like that.

- So say you've tested and you decide to replenish the Vitamin A in one way or another.

How quickly does the cow start to turn around and see the benefits?

- We saw it relatively quickly in this herd.

You know, we went from 0.12 to 0.29 in quite a few cows that we tested on average in a period of about three weeks.

But Lyndall, to make a more rapid recovery we used an injectable product as well as increased the amount of Vitamin A in their feed supplement.

We injected, it was a 10 milliliter dose and we injected about 1 million international units of Vitamin A.

That sounds like a lot, but a lactating cow requires about 50,000 international units of Vitamin A per day.

- And the other way, of course is when Mother Nature cooperates.

And as we see it's raining this week, which is certainly welcome.

Talk about how that will kind of help obviously green up the pastures and get things going again.

- Yeah, absolutely.

Hopefully this will solve the problem.

Because you know, the lush green forage is gonna have loads of carotene and those cows heavy capability convert that carotene to active Vitamin A.

So it should improve things a lot.

- And you and the team have a fact sheet too for folks who- - We do.

Wanna read more in depth?

- We do, and it's, you know should be available there at sunup.okstate.edu.

- All right, we'll check it out.

Dave thanks a lot.

We'll talk to you again soon.

(bright upbeat music) - Welcome to the Mesonet Weather Report.

I'm Wes Lee.

It has been a long time since widespread rains were seen across the state.

Finally, this week we had rain recorded at all 120 Mesonet sites.

This is the two day rainfall map as of Wednesday afternoon.

- One inch plus totals in the panhandle, and most places in the severely dry northwest getting two inches or more.

At that time, it was still raining in the eastern third of the state, and rain probabilities persisted into the latter part of the week.

While this rain event did not solve all of our soil moisture problems, it did make a dent in it.

On this four-inch fractional water index map, you can see a nice green color with numbers near one in about 80% of the state.

Dry soil still persisted at this time in the southwest and parts of the panhandle.

But compared to where we were at starting the week, it shows great improvement, with much of the red areas disappearing completely.

At Goodwell, one of the driest panhandle locations, you can see how the rains improved the soil moisture at multiple depths.

Water penetrated to the 2 and 4 inch soil depths, but the dry soil kept it from making it down to the 10-inch sensor.

Now, here's Gary with more on the rainfall situation.

(graphics whooshing softly) - Thanks Wes, and good morning everyone.

Well, we got rainfall, finally.

So, we're gonna take a look at that old drought monitor map 'cause we won't see any changes on it.

And then, we're gonna take a little bit of a comparison between what we had previously in the year versus the last few days.

So, let's get right to it.

Well, that drought monitor map unchanged from last week, we went with status quo because we were expecting heavy rainfall.

So, any changes you see will be next week due to this rain, and certainly not this week 'cause this week's map is really ugly, as we showed last week, lots of D4, D3 drought across the northwestern half the state, and a little bit of a drought starting to try and develop across the southeastern parts of the state, so this rainfall came just in the nick of time.

You take a look at that consecutive days with less than a quarter inch rainfall map right before this rain hit.

And you see lots of areas across the north and western half of the state.

Getting up there from 30 to 50 to 100, to as many as 237 days in a row without at least a quarter inch of rainfall.

And that was even starting to extend over to east central Oklahoma.

So again, just in the nick of time to prevent the drought from spreading into other parts of the state, and maybe curtail it in the north and western half.

Okay, this is the recent rainfall, and you can see how much we had, a good area from one to three, but I wanted to show that in contrast to what we had in the previous 113 days.

This is January 1st through April 23rd versus April 24th through April 26th.

And you can see, many areas, especially across the north and western half of the state, had nearly double what they had the previous 113 days, so two days versus 113 days.

Certainly an amazing amount of rainfall compared to what we had previously over the last four months.

So, well done, mother nature.

(funky guitar playing) So, a pretty good rainfall over nearly entire state.

Some areas could have used a little bit more, but it's a good start.

Now, we need some reinforcements.

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

(funky guitar playing intensifies) - I'm Kim Anderson, welcome to "Tailgate Talk" on market monitoring.

What a difference that wheat makes.

I mean, look at this rain, it's just spectacular, we've had to figure out what it was for a while, but wheat prices have also fallen about ¢77 just last week.

Go up to Medford, look at what you can forward contract for harvest delivery today, or around $7.55.

That's ¢77 lower than it was last week when we were taping this show.

You look at corn, it's down ¢28, it's down to around, oh $5.23 just below that $5.25 support price.

Bean prices are down about ¢50.

Again, down below that $12 level, where we had a relatively good support, but we've got support for beans.

Lookin' at the crop condition report, wheat crop conditions declined considerably over the last couple weeks.

You look at the overall hard red winter wheat condition that these are my numbers, 42% last year at harvest, for a poor to very poor.

38% two weeks ago, 43%.

So, you went down from a couple weeks ago.

You look at Oklahoma this time at harvest last year, we were around 48, 49%.

Couple weeks ago, 45%, wheat dropped to 62%, poor to very poor.

Oh, in Oklahoma hard red winter wheat conditions.

Kansas State, about the same, they were at 41%, poor to very poor last harvest, 61 a week ago, 62% now, so not much change.

Texas went from 47% to 55%, so significantly lower this last week.

They were at 82% last year, so at least the Texas crops better than it was last year.

Why is that happening?

Well, we talk about Russia, and you look at all the major exporters around the worlds, you look at a five year average.

You got the US at 13%, you got others at 10%.

Argentina, 7, Australia, 9, Canada, 12, EU, 16, goin' around Russia, 19% on the average, Ukraine at 9%, Kazakhstan, 4.

The Black Sea, over 33% of almost 40% of all exported wheat come outta that Black Sea area.

Look at, now that we've had the war, what's goin' on right now.

- [Kim Anderson] For '22 -'23, US declined to 10%.

You've got other that stayed at 10.

Argentina at three.

You go around and look at these, Canada stayed relatively stable, Ukraine, but Russia went from 19% to 21%.

Kazakhstan went from 3 to 5 and Ukraine went from 9 to 7.

Still, that black seed, but especially Russia.

Russia's exporting 1.4 billion bushels of wheat, and Oklahoma only produces, on the average, 95 million.

So, you can see how big an impact that Russia can have on wheat prices.

But we've got a month or so until we get into our harvest.

And a lot can happen to prices between now and then.

I'm Kim Anderson, "Tailgate Talk" on "Market Monitor", we'll see you next week.

(lively music) - Good morning, Oklahoma, or good afternoon, however you're receiving this information.

We welcome you to Cow-Calf Corner and this week's topic, we follow up our topic from a couple weeks ago when we began to talk about the Blueprint for the Future Cattle Conference that we're having May 24th and 25th here in Stillwater.

I am Mark Johnson.

I am joined today by Macey Goretska.

And we're basically gonna address some of these questions that we've had in conversations and phone calls and emails about the conference.

Macey and I are just gonna have a casual conversation about this.

Macey, I appreciate you taking time out of your schedule to be with us today.

- Yeah.

I'm very excited to be here.

- What is our first question?

- Okay, our first question that we have is, "Who had the idea for the Blueprint for the Future Conference and why are we doing it now?

- Good question.

And you know, we've got a long history in our department.

It's kind of part of our culture.

There's been some really significant or what many people refer to as watershed beef cattle conferences here at OSU over time.

And so, when we had the first Cattleman's Congress show in 2021, there were a group of us that we continued to have conversations about what was going on, and what did we need to address, and was it time for another Cattle Conference?

And you know, we made reference back to the Steer Symposium in 1982 and the Blueprint for the Right Kind Conference in 1988 and all the things that were on people's mind right now.

And we got more serious about it over time.

And eventually, it was the Noble Research Institute and the Cattleman's Congress personnel and we got together here in the Department of Animal Science, Dave Lawman and our Cooperative Extension group.

And we started meeting late last summer and came up with our topics to address and began to contact a group of nationally renowned speakers.

- [Macey] You mentioned the Steer Symposium from '82 and the Blueprint for the Right Kind in '88.

I think some people would be curious how is this similar to or different than those meetings.

- As we think about this program, as compared to those in '82 when Dr. Todd Aschek got the idea for the Steer Symposium, it was really because the extremely tall steers that were winning in the show rang at that point, weren't really fitting the practical kind of steers that we were seeing that met consumer demand and met our grading standards a lot better.

And so, that Steer Symposium was more about changing the on-foot type of steers that were winning in the show rank.

The Blueprint for the Right Kind Conference in '88 more addressed breeding cattle, but the same thought.

This one, probably more topics and we dig deeper into topics that are currently challenging the beef industry, as well as looking at some live cattle.

- Great.

Well, I'm really excited.

I think one of the common questions, in general, is how do we register, and how much does it cost to register?

- Cattleman's Congress has set up a website that folks can go to, to register, and when you register there, you'll fill out your information, you will get a confirmation back from them that you've completed your registration.

Cost of Early Bird registration up into the beginning of May is $200.

That includes all parts of the Conference and all your meals during the Conference.

And there is a $50 discount, if you are an OSU Extension Educator, so you can actually register for $150.

- Okay.

- And while there's an Early Bird registration, we will also continue to accept walk-in registration up until the day that we start the Conference.

We'll continue to address questions as they come in.

I appreciate you all joining us on Cow-Calf Corner this week.

(bright music) - [Narrator] We just want to take a quick break in our show to congratulate our host Lyndall Stout who reached a career milestone this month, twenty-five years on air in television broadcasting.

She's been with the SUNUP team for the past 12 years and prior to that, worked at WBRE in northwestern Pennsylvania, KARK in Little Rock and KTEN in Dennison, Texas.

- [Announcer] Congratulations Lyndall, and thank you for your service to our industry and our state.

(upbeat music) - So recently there was a positive detection in a couple of states of Equine Herpes Myeloencephalopathy, and that included Oklahoma within the last week or so at a horse show that was held at the Tulsa Fairgrounds.

Equine Herpes Myeloencephalopathy is the neurologic form of Equine Herpes Virus-1, and equine herpes virus is a very common virus within our equine population.

We commonly see respiratory signs that's generally, you know, the common name of equine herpes virus would be rhino.

And so we can also see a neonatal form as well as an abortion form.

But the one that's most concerning is again, this Equine Herpes Myeloencephalopathy.

That's the neurologic form of the virus.

We're particularly concerned because in most instances there's a 30 to even 50% mortality rate if a horse starts exhibiting neurologic signs.

This is a very typical virus that has an incubation period of usually seven to 14 days.

It's transmitted by respiratory, so it can be aerosolized for a short period of time.

However, the most common ways of transmission are either nose-to-nose contact or through common drinking areas can be a problem.

And even those of us that handle horses can carry the virus on our clothes, on our hands, et cetera, and spread it from horse to horse.

Once we have a detection, we want isolation of those horses and we want monitoring of those horses at a very minimum of taking temperatures, in my opinion, at least twice a day.

We're trying to look for any signs of fever.

With that, you know, when we go to a show 'cause we're starting here.

We're in the middle of spring.

We're starting these heavy show months as we enter summer of major equine events across the nation, we really need to be thinking about biosecurity.

So first and foremost, if I'm going to a show, I wanna think about making sure that those stalls that I'm about to put my horses in are disinfected.

A great disinfectant that works is a bleach to water combo in about a one to 10 ratio to spray those stalls down.

But if I do see either fever or I see respiratory signs in any of my horses, I wanna get them isolated and I want to make sure that if we have something contagious that we're talking to show management.

In Oklahoma, it's important to recognize that it is required.

Any equine neurologic case is reported to the Oklahoma Department of Agriculture.

The Oklahoma Department of Agriculture does have funds available to do free testing on horses that are neurologic to see what the potential cause is because we're concerned for the equine industry in Oklahoma and really nationwide.

For more information regarding equine herpes virus and specifically the neurologic form, visit our SUNUP website and we'll provide additional links there.

(upbeat music) - Today, I thought I'd share a little bit of information about modified atmosphere packaging.

Modified atmosphere packaging or MAP is a commonly used type of technology that helps extend the shelf life of foods by modifying the composition of the internal atmosphere within the package made of various combinations of film.

In other words, MAP can reduce food spoilage by altering the types of gas inside of a package that is made from different types of plastic.

The Food and Drug Administration categorizes MAP as either passive or active.

Passive MAP involves sealing of food inside a package with a gas permeable film that allows the desired concentration of gas to develop naturally as the food requires and releases gas that passes through the film.

This MAP method may be used with fresh fruits and vegetables, for example.

Active MAP involves sealing a food inside a package whose internal atmosphere has been removed and replaced with a desired mixture of gases.

This may be accomplished through the use of a number of active systems, including gas flushing, oxygen and carbon dioxide scavengers, and moisture absorbers.

This MAP method may be used with fresh meat, for example.

Factors such as the type of product, the packaging material, and the storage temperature can determine which mixture of gases and films are used in a particular modified atmosphere and its associated packaging.

Gases that may be used to modify the atmosphere within a package include oxygen, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, and nitrogen.

Gases such as helium, argon, and xenon may be used in place of nitrogen.

Barrier packaging films that may be used to control the gases within a modified atmosphere package include low density polyethylene, polyvinyl chloride, or polypropylene.

It's important to note that MAP must be used along with proper refrigeration to prevent the growth of spoilage, microorganisms, and pathogens.

So just a little bit of information about modified atmosphere packaging.

- For more information, please visit sunup.okstate.edu, or food.okstate.edu.

(jaunty music) - So most Oklahomans are familiar with blackberry.

And it's actually in the genus rubus.

And there's lots of different species of rubus across the United States.

They're called blackberry, dewberry and lots of other names, but they all look very similar.

It's probably about the most perfect wildlife plant.

It produces palatable foliage that deer and rabbits eat.

It provides cover.

Rabbit and deer and lots of ground nesting birds use it for cover for nesting.

And of course, everybody knows about the fruit.

The soft mass that it produces, that we all like to eat.

And wildlife is no exception.

Lots of wildlife use it.

There are situations though, where blackberry can become really dominant in a pasture.

And you may want to set it back or not have it over such a large area of the field.

There's several herbicides that are effective.

Triclopyr is one that a lot of producers will use.

You can also use metsulfuron, or Fluroxypyr, or some combination of those.

But the one thing I would caution you, if you're gonna control blackberry, is just to think about your other objectives.

Because if you have wildlife objectives, you wanna retain some of this plant.

You probably don't want it over 50% of your pasture, but having some of it scattered about, at least on the edges of the pasture will make a huge difference in how many deer, turkey, quail, and lots of other wildlife you have on that property.

But even if only you're thinking about livestock, livestock do use blackberry to some extent.

They'll use it for shade.

But again, it can compete against grass.

So it's always a balance.

But just before you go through and spray the whole field, think about your overall objectives and also try to target those blackberry plants specifically because the herbicides I mentioned will kill lots of other desirable plants in that pasture that you may also care about.

- Finally, today, with the recent devastating storms across Oklahoma, especially hard-hit Potawatomi in McLean counties, Dr. Amy Hagerman today takes a look at some extension resources that are available to help those who are picking up the pieces.

- And the first thing is just to make sure it's safe to go back on your property, to check out the damages.

If you're talking about a fire, is it safe to get back in that area?

Are you away from the line of the fire?

If you're talking about a tornado, those structures probably need to be checked out to make sure it's safe to get back into that area.

So just that's first consideration.

Safety before you go in and then go check the damages.

Because then you really know what you're working with and you can begin to document those.

So the first thing is you're thinking about insurance, you're thinking about your lender, and you're thinking about federal programs.

So there's a couple of different kinds of documentation there that you need.

The first is your documentation that you have safely stored on some secondary location that if some sort of damage happens to your home, that you have a secondary backup of things like your ownership paperwork, your insurance policies and things like that.

So that's the first thing we're checking out.

Making sure we have that paper documentation available.

Then we're taking pictures and videos of the actual damages.

Again, safety first.

Make sure it's safe to go in and do that.

But you need some sort of idea that you can take to your insurance agent or to your USDA agent to give them an idea of the kind of damage that you actually experienced on the operation or in your home.

So videos, photos are great for that.

Even just taking them on your phone, texting 'em to your agent, if they have that kind of system.

I think you need to bear in mind, especially if it's a widespread disaster, there's gonna be a lot of people reaching out at once.

So start reaching out early, but be prepared to be patient as they deal with multiple people that may have damages.

But you wanna be fairly quickly, especially for a lot of the federal disaster programs that notice of loss needs to occur within 15 to 30 days.

You don't have to be out within the first 24 hours, but certainly within the first week, you wanna have a good idea of what those damages are and start making those contacts.

It needs to be done as soon as is safely possible.

We have specific segments for different types of disasters and so they cover everything from that documentation, cleanup, safety and cleanup.

And then also different kinds of recovery programs because recovery programs are gonna be different for any one of these kinds of disasters and what's available to a producer.

- That'll do it for our show this week.

A reminder, you can see us anytime at sunup.okstate.edu.

And also follow us on YouTube and social media.

I'm Lyndall Stout.

Have a great week, everyone!

And remember, Oklahoma Agriculture starts at Sunup.

(gentle music)