(upbeat music) - Good morning, Oklahoma, I'm Kurtis Hair and welcome to "SUNUP."

Well, we're in the thick of another heat wave here in the state, and while pastures are generally pretty green, things can change pretty quickly with a flash drought.

So what does all this mean for protein supplementation for fall calving operations?

Well, for guidance here's OSU Extension beef cattle specialist, Dr. Dave Lalman.

- I thought I just might mention a little about protein supplementation for a fall calving herd, because here we are in late August, early September is just about a week away, and forage quality, especially on tall grass prairie, or native range land is declining rapidly this time of year, especially with the really hot weather we've had here recently.

The actual native grass forage species, the big blue stem, switch grass, Indian grass species are gonna be the leaf material is gonna be down around in that 6% crude protein range.

Well, a cow that's lactating has a protein requirement in her diet of around 11%, 10 to 11%, depending on how much milk she gives.

And it goes up pretty dramatically essentially the day she calves.

Consequently, we can have a pretty substantial negative gap in protein supply there.

And what that does is sort of exacerbates a potential body weight loss on that female from the time she calves until the time we start the breeding season, probably sometime in November.

If a cow is grazing native range land, about 6% protein this time of year, she needs, her requirement, is about 3.3 pounds of protein a day, you know given average milk production potential.

3.3 pounds.

But if she's grazing native rangeland, she might only be getting, at 6% protein around 30 pounds of forage intake, she might only be getting about 1.8 pounds.

And so that leads a gap of around a pound and a half a day of crude protein.

If the cow has a pound and a half a day protein deficiency, it's gonna take seven and a half pounds of 20% cubes to fill just the protein gap.

So, you know, that's gonna be an expensive proposition.

Certainly would supply a lot of energy maybe to help those young females gain weight.

But if you're feeding a 38% product, it would take about four pounds of that product to fill that one and a half pounds of protein supply.

So there's a lot of moving targets when it comes to making efficient supplementation decisions this time of year.

You know, there's cases where the cattle won't need any supplement because of forage quality.

There's cases where they might need a considerable amount.

And so adjusting the calving season, adjusting the forage type the animals are grazing at the time and certainly adjusting the supplementation program to match the animal's requirement is a really important strategy.

One method I ought to mention that's very helpful is to keep an eye on the cattle's fecal patties.

If they're starting to stack up, that's a good indication perhaps that protein supply is deficient.

Just to wrap up, supplementing a fall calving herd this time of year, number one, I'd say don't wait and start the program too late after the cattle have already lost a significant amount of weight and condition.

Get started early, this time of year, depending on the forage species you're grazing, there may be a significant protein gap.

And if you just fill that protein gap here early in the year when you have abundant forage, it can be high in digestibility once you fill that protein gap.

(upbeat music) - Welcome to the Mesonet weather report, I'm Wes Lee.

We're a month away from fall, but looking at last week's temperatures, it's clear summer is firmly in control.

It was one of the hottest weeks of the year and relief is not expected until at least the end of the weekend.

On Sunday, high temperatures reached the triple digits almost statewide.

This was about 10 to 20 degrees above the long-term average.

Some of the hottest temperatures were along the southern border, including 111 in Waurika.

Heat index numbers, which also consider the humidity, climbed into the 120s at several eastern locations, the highest being slightly over 125 at Okmulgee.

Monday, the high temperatures look like a mirror image of Sunday with again the southern tier of counties bearing the brunt of the heat.

But when looking at the heat index map, a couple of new Mesonet records were broken.

The 126.74 heat index for Jay marked the third time this record has been broken this summer.

- Jay also had the highest dew point temperature ever recorded in Mesonet history of 85.14.

Near 100-degree temperatures continued Tuesday and Wednesday and were expected through the weekend.

Hopefully next week will bring us closer to more seasonal conditions.

Now, here's Gary talking about flash drought expansion.

- Thanks, Wesson.

Good morning, everyone.

Well, it's something I've been warning you about for the last couple of weeks.

And unfortunately, it has actually come true.

And that is the development of flash drought across southern Oklahoma.

Let's get right to that new map and see where we're at.

And there you can see it.

That large area of tan across the southern third of Oklahoma and the surrounding yellow which are the abnormally dry conditions.

The tan is a moderate drought, so it's the beginning of drought.

This is based on 30 to 40 days of lack of rainfall and extreme temperatures, lots of sunshine.

And then, of course, we still have the remaining D2 D3 areas up across North Central Oklahoma.

You can see the basis of the bulk of the drought on these consecutive days with less than a quarter inch rainfall from the Mesonet.

Now, we're up to basically 42, 43 days.

Liable to go much higher than that across Southern Oklahoma.

So this dry spell, I guess, you would call it, lasts more than a month.

It's actually about a month and a half.

So, something to be very concerned about as we go forward.

The rainfall over the last 30 days also tells the tale.

This is sort of the opposite of what we had previously where we had the I-44 cutoff.

This goes from northwest to southeast.

And if you get to the southwest of that line, very little rainfall in some cases.

A little bit more up in West Central Oklahoma.

One to two inches of rainfall.

But when you get down in South Central Oklahoma, there are stations that have had no rainfall over the last 30 days.

And of course, as I said previously, you can extend that out another 10 to 15 days in some areas.

Now, let's take a look at the percent of normal rainfall for the last 30 days that same timeframe.

This is for July 24th through August 22nd.

You know, some of those areas down there with 0% of normal rainfall.

Those are those big goose eggs I was talking about.

So, we do need some rain and we can take some clouds.

That's it for this time.

We'll see you next time on the "Mesonet Weather Report."

- Well, as we discussed early in the show, we're in the thick of another heat wave.

So Josh, what does this mean for summer crops?

- We are starting to see the effects of it in a lot of our summer crops.

Some of our summer crops are enjoying it, maybe like cotton, some later planted crops.

But some of our earlier planted crops that are actively in kind of the most critical stages either in the last heat wave or currently in this one, we are seeing some impact of that.

And a lot of that's on just decreasing that potential yield that we're seeing in a lot of those crops.

So, let's start with sorghum, since we have it right behind us.

What are you seeing in the sorghum fields that were planted early that might be dealing, might be struggling with this heat wave?

- Well, if we're planted early enough, kinda like this crop is here, we're basically done.

So, it's using this heat actually very well to dry down the crop because we are already at what we call physiological maturity.

The grain is dry.

It's kind of separated itself from the plant.

So, this heat's kinda good 'cause it helps us dry that grain down a little bit faster.

If we are a little bit later planted than this, and we're still trying to fill that grain, that's where we start seeing that.

That issue start to kind of creep in.

If we're even earlier and we're just now flowering which is what you see at the tops of these heads here to where the tops of them have kind of looked maybe black.

Oftentimes, that's because of heat stress or moisture stress when they're going through pollination and setting those berries.

And when we do that, if it's really hot or really dry for a prolonged amount of time, we just don't set it and we can kinda lose the yield on the top end there.

- And for soybean, you actually have some examples of what you're seeing with what the heat is.

- Yeah, so we have an earlier planted soybean here.

And yeah, it's middle of August and we're dry.

I mean, this is ready to harvest.

The unfortunate thing is as you can see here, the the pods are flat.

- Yeah.

- There's not any seed in it.

So, it's dried down.

It looks like it's ready to go.

But if you were to run a combine through this, it wouldn't have any seed.

- Yeah.

- As opposed to this one, which was only planted two weeks later.

Still really green.

We're still filling pods.

It doesn't have as many pods because it did, it was setting more of these pods in that first heat wave that we went through.

But the pods that were setting actually have seed in it.

So, when we get this finished and dry, this is actually gonna be harvestable.

We can see that the current heat wave is taking its toll on a couple of pods that are aborting themselves.

But as a whole, this plant itself is gonna have seed.

It's gonna be able to be harvested.

So, if we stretch this heat wave out a little bit longer, this plant could look just as bad as this plant.

- Yeah.

- But if we do kind of wrap that heat wave, kind of go into a more typical fall pattern with some rainfall and some cooling temperatures, then this plant, this later planted, as well as a lot of our double crop planted is gonna look a lot better this year.

- So, what about corn?

How's corn looking?

- [Josh] We pulled cobs yesterday on the corn that were gonna be cut.

And a lot of the cobs looked really good.

Our test weights were really good, so.

- Even though we do have a little bit more sunken in tops than we thought, maybe we didn't lose as much of that top-end yield as we potentially could've.

So our corn hopefully looks really nice.

Our later planted corn looks exceptional.

It's really loving this heat, really getting going.

We just are gonna need constant rains for that corn crop and a lot of our later crop.

That double crop behind wheat is still gonna need some rains to make it through.

- Well, hopefully we get, you know, some in the forecast coming up here pretty quick.

- We can only hope.

- You actually have- Yeah, right, you actually have an event coming up pretty soon, so why don't you talk a little bit about that?

- Yeah, so next Friday, so we're gonna be the Friday right before the first home football game here on campus, we're gonna have a soil health training at the agronomy farm.

We're gonna be talking about cover crop selection, how we manage cover crops, how those impact soil, grazing cover crops, a lot of things looking at more of our conservation-based systems, and a lot of those cover crop systems.

So if anybody's interested, it's open to everybody.

There's no registration.

There's no fee.

All you gotta do is show up.

We're gonna start in between 8:30 and 9:00 on next Friday.

And anybody that wants to show up can come, learn a little bit, and then, you know, stick around Stillwater for the first football game.

- All righty, thanks Josh.

- Thank you.

- Josh Lofton, OSU Extension cropping systems specialist here at Oklahoma State University.

And if you'd like a link to the soil health training that he's offering, go to our website, sunup.okstate.edu.

(light country music) It's time to check in with the livestock markets with our livestock marketing specialist, Dr. Derrell Peel.

So Derrell, of course, it's hot again.

You know, things are starting to dry out a little bit.

But what are pasture conditions looking like?

Looks pretty green right here.

How are things looking in the state?

- Yeah, you know, we've had a dramatic turnaround this year.

If you go back to the springtime, we had a lotta drought.

In fact, when the first condition report for pastures and rangelands came out in May, 54% of Oklahoma's pastures and rangelands were rated poor to very poor.

And then we got a lotta rain through the spring and into July.

July was a very wet month.

And we got down to a point in mid-July where, you know, only 5%, 6%, I think, of the Oklahoma's pastures and ranges were rated poor to very poor.

Now, it's gotten hot since then.

It's that time of year.

And so we've gone back up a little bit.

I think in the latest report, about 20% of the pastures are rated poor to very poor condition.

But as you said, the pastures are still green.

They're still growing at this point.

- So do you think it's gonna be enough to kinda finish off summer for a lot of producers?

- I think so.

You know, the pastures are doing well.

Subsoil moisture is in pretty good shape.

So you know, we're gonna have some hot weather.

They'll slow down a little bit, but we're, you know, we're gonna have adequate pasture to finish out the summer.

And in fact, I think there's a decent chance that producers who choose to, with some warm season forage, will have a chance to stockpile some forage for later in the fall.

- Speaking of stockpiling, how's hay production looking like, you know, right now?

- You know, USDA in their August crop production report released estimates for 2023 hay production.

Oklahoma, of course, had drawn down hay stocks really dramatically over the last couple of years of drought.

But hay production in 2023 is actually, other hay production, which is our predominant source of hay, so it's non-alfalfa hay, if you will, is at a record level for 2023.

So dramatic increase.

Alfalfa production is up.

So total hay production in Oklahoma is really jumped sharply here, completely replenishing, if you will, the hay supplies.

- Well, you know, I think the biggest question a lotta producers have is: Will that hay supplies, you know, get them through the winter, given what happened last year and the year before?

- Yeah, again, we started the year with very low hay stocks in May, and you know, that's the way we calculate hay supply is to take what we carry into the new crop year in May.

That was a almost record low.

And yet, with the hay production that USDA's reporting for this year, it would appear that we've rebuilt hay supplies in Oklahoma to very adequate levels to take us through the winter.

- So how is all this impacting, you know, herd rebuilding?

You had mentioned you hadn't really seen it in the data the last time we spoke.

But do you think all of this is gonna contribute to an increase?

- Well, certainly in Oklahoma, it's possible at least now, right, with the forage condition improvement that we've seen.

We have the ability to increase.

And I think as we go forward, we're likely to see it.

It's gonna depend on producers' expectations going forward, but I think it's very likely that we will begin to see here in the last part of the year some indications of heifer retention.

We'll probably see cow culling drop to a minimal level.

- All righty, thanks, Derrell.

Dr. Derrell Peel, livestock marketing specialist here at Oklahoma State University.

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

I'm Mark Johnson, and this week's topic is late summer protein supplementation for cost-effective gains in growing calves or even our spring-born calf crop that's not weaned yet.

We have been very fortunate this summer in Oklahoma, as opposed to the last year or so, that many of us have had moisture.

And a lot of us have got some standing forage on hand right now.

- Those same pastures that in May we might've seen calves gaining two to three pounds a day on that were really good quality, those grasses were immature, they were high in digestibility, they were high in crude protein content, over 10%.

And as we get to the middle of June and fast forward into August, where we're at right now, the quality of those grasses goes down, digestibility decreases, and crude protein content drops down to 6 to 7% in a lot of cases.

And so those same calves, they might not be gaining but about half as much as what they were just two to three months ago.

The solution to this is a couple of very well-researched programs going back to the era of Dr. Don Gill, the Oklahoma Gold and the Oklahoma Super Gold programs, where we're gonna supplement a very limited amount of a 38% crude protein, really only one pound a day, to growing calves, 38% crude protein.

We've got an ionophore in this mix, good vitamin-mineral supplementation, and that protein supplementation is going to get enough protein into the diet of these calves, it's gonna stimulate more forage consumption.

A lot of us in this intense heat of the past few weeks have seen some very green pastures turn brown that coincides with that reduction in quality.

And so a couple of fact sheets that we reference on screen get into a lot of information and some questions and answers on the Oklahoma Gold and the Oklahoma Super Gold programs.

But the point is, if we've got standing forage on hand, a limited amount of a high protein supplement, we're going to increase that to the point that calves can maximize gains again on some lower quality standing forage.

Subtle differences between these two, between the Gold and the Super Gold.

I encourage you to investigate those fact sheets.

Depending on your feeding situation, if it's more practical for you to feed every day, if you need to be in every other day, maybe once every three days, it kind of impacts which of these programs may work better for you with regard to management.

So a couple of very well-researched things to put some late season gains on calves.

Hope this helps, and as always, thank you for joining us on "Cow Calf Corner".

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

Let's start out talking about corn, soybeans, and cotton, and then let's go look at wheat, what to expect between now and January 1, and for the 2024 harvest.

Corn, you can forward contract for about $4.75 for harvest delivery.

The average price of corn in Oklahoma during harvest since 2008 has been $4.80, so we have about an average price being offered right now.

If you look at world and US corn production, both of 'em are near the record.

World ending stocks and US ending stocks are projected to be above average, and that supports these prices down near the average.

If you look at soybeans, you can forward contract for around $12.60.

The average harvest price since 2008 has been $10.60, so above average price here.

You're looking at record world production and average US soybean production.

The December cotton contract price is around 84 cents.

That implies that the harvest cotton price will be around 80 or 81.

Now to wheat.

We have knocked $1.75 off of wheat prices since mid-July.

Once they got down a few weeks ago, they've been waddling around between, oh, $6.70 and $7.10.

You can forward contract 2024 harvested wheat for $6.70, and the current price is around 6.75.

Argentina and Australia, their harvest will start in September and will go through December.

They're both projected to have about an average crop.

Canada's harvest is starting up relatively soon with their hard spring wheat.

They're projected to have an an above-average crop, as is the European Union.

Now, Germany and France in the EU are the biggest wheat producers and exporters.

They're having a wet harvest, and that's been reducing the yield and the quality of their product.

But Russia is projected to harvest the second largest wheat crop ever.

They came into this marketing year with above-average ending stocks, and they have a tremendous amount of wheat to export.

Right now, it's projected to be 1.73 billion bushels, and it'll probably go above that, with their average less than 1.4.

Ukraine, of course, they're looking at harvesting 50 to 60% of a crop, and we'll see if they can get that harvested.

The average Oklahoma harvest price since 2008 has been right at $6.

The market is offering, oh, 6.60, 6.70 right now in Northern Oklahoma, less than that in southern Oklahoma, maybe a little more than that in the Panhandle.

I think that that $6.60 to $6.70 price is probably a good midpoint range right now.

- The next few weeks will tell us the wheat trend for the next few months.

I'll see you next week on "Market Monitor."

- The first week of the 2023 fall semester is officially in the books here at OSU.

And in addition to welcoming new students, the cowboy family also welcomed the new vice president and dean of OSU Agriculture, Dr. Jayson Lusk.

Our host, Lyndall Stout, recently caught up with Dr. Lusk to find out more about his journey to OSU.

- We're joined now by Dr. Jayson Lusk, the new vice president and dean of OSU Agriculture.

Dr. Lusk, welcome to "SUNUP."

- Hi Lyndall, it's great to be here.

- And welcome back to Oklahoma.

You've been in Indiana the past few years.

- I have, yeah, I spent about 12 to 13 years here on faculty at Oklahoma State.

It's where we raised our kids here in Stillwater.

Spent a lot of great memory, have a lot of great memories here in Oklahoma.

So after a six year hiatus, it's wonderful to be back in the state and at Oklahoma State University.

- Now you were at Purdue, where you were leading the Ag Economics department there, right?

- We were, and it was a great experience to get away and learn a little bit about how things work in another state.

But, you know, the opportunity arose here to come back to a state where agriculture is important to the state and where agriculture that happens in the state is critical to our nation's flourishing, whether it's wheat, cattle, or other commodities like pork.

What we do here in Oklahoma matters for food security in the rest of the country and the world.

So that's really an exciting opportunity to come back and get to have an impact on a important state, but also in the country and the world.

- Well, for sure.

And this is closer to home for you, isn't it?

- It is.

So I grew up in the Texas panhandle.

My wife is from Kansas.

So in terms of proximity to family, this is a great compromise for us.

But what we found over time is that Oklahoma's not a compromise.

It's a great place to be in and of itself but also that ability just to get in the car and go see friends, family, relatives is just a perk of the job.

- For sure.

Tell us a little bit about your work to this point.

You've really studied food, what we eat, why we eat it, all of that.

Can you kind of sum that up in a nutshell?

- Much of my career has focused on research, trying to understand what consumers eat and why they eat it.

Consumers have been playing an increasingly important role in the food supply chain.

And so trying to understand what it is that consumers want, what they're willing to pay for new products and new technology so that farmers and agribusinesses can make critical decisions about which food attributes or characteristics they should focus on is something that's occupied a lot of my time.

- A lot of people have read your books too, and you have a relatively new book that's out as well.

- I do and I think at some point in a lot of scientist's career, they hope to have an impact beyond just their scientific community.

So it was important to me to try to communicate directly with the public.

So I've written several popular books, one with a colleague here at Oklahoma State, Bailey Norwood, where we explored the role of animal welfare in agriculture, but also books looking at some of the misperceptions people have about agriculture and trying to help them understand why things happen in agriculture the way they do.

The more recent book really is trying to celebrate the role of science and technology in helping improve our lot in life.

We do have big challenges in agriculture, whether it's availability to water, sometimes unfortunately runoff of nitrogen from farm fields.

On the the consumer side we have things like health issues, diabetes, obesity.

So we do have real problems and, in my view, if we wanna make headway in addressing those problems, we're gonna need innovation.

We're gonna need science and technology.

We're gonna need to get those technologies in the hands of people that can make use of them.

And that's, you know, really I think one of the privileges of this role is to try to help lead an organization to help provide those technologies to provide solutions for people.

- Of course, it'll take a little bit of time to set your agenda, right, in your leadership role, but what are some of your early priorities that you're gonna start focusing on?

- One of the first priorities is to listen and learn.

I know there's a lot that I need to learn and to get up to speed.

So that is a priority of mine as we start thinking about some of those strategic opportunities in the future.

We have a wonderful New Frontiers building that will be a great opportunity for us that really helps us move to that forefront of knowledge and do top-notch science.

But we have a lot of other infrastructure needs, whether it's on agronomy farm, animal science facilities that I want to take a look at and make sure that we can also do top-notch research and extension in those areas of of work.

Another area is student success.

I've got a son who will be a freshman here at Oklahoma State University in agriculture.

So I have a vested interest in ensuring that we do a good job with our students to make sure they can be employed and that they can earn a good living and have the kinda lives that they want to have when we get outta here.

So making sure that we have strong student success will definitely be a priority of mine.

- I appreciate your time today, Dr. Lusk.

I'm sure this is the first of many conversations that we will have over the years.

Best of luck in your new position.

- Thanks, Lyndall, it's great to be here and I'm looking forward to rolling up my sleeves and getting to work.

- And that about wraps it up this week.

Now remember, you can find us anytime at sunup.okstate.edu and follow us on YouTube and social media.

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

(upbeat music) (guitar strumming)