(upbeat music) - Hello, everyone, and welcome to "SUNUP."

I'm Lyndall Stout.

We join you today from the Cimarron Valley Ag Research Station at Perkins, where we're in the pecan orchard with Becky Carroll, our OSU Extension fruit and pecan specialist.

And Becky, let's dive right in and talk about how pecans are looking in Oklahoma this year.

- Okay, well, this year we have had some pretty good growing conditions.

Here at the research station, we have a full crop as we usually do every year, but across the state, it's a little mixed in areas.

I've heard some good news from the northeastern counties and then some from the south central area, where they have a good native crop.

And then others have kind of a mixed crop on their improved varieties.

So we'll see at the end of the year.

It's still a little bit a few weeks out from harvest time.

And so a lot can still happen between now and then.

- Lots of optimism, of course, but there are some challenges too.

We're still seeing drought in some areas.

Let's kind of talk about that.

- Yeah, drought is really...

It's kind of been creeping in in different areas where we have pecans growing, and so water is extremely important at this stage.

When we transition from the sizing stage, when the pecans are still have water inside, and they go to that gel and dough stage, where they're filling with kernel, that water is extremely important to fill that kernel completely out.

And without water, we'll end up with lightweight, kind of, weight-free pecans.

And so we need a lot of water this time of year to fill them out properly.

- Another thing you're keeping an eye on are weevils.

- Yes.

This is the time when growers really need to be protecting their pecans from the weevil.

And so we're about two weeks earlier than normal on our nut development.

And so we wanna have that protection.

We're really monitoring for the...

They stay in the ground for two to three years, and then they come out after a big rain or irrigation event.

So when they're coming out of the ground, we have traps to monitor their coming out of the ground and going up to the trees.

And when they're at that dough stage, we really need that protection.

So we're monitoring and spraying at the dough stage so we don't get weevil eggs or larva inside our pecans.

And so we need to have that insecticide application very timely.

And since we are a couple of weeks ahead of schedule on development, I'm afraid some of our growers may just be going by a calendar and may miss that window early, and so they may not have that protection they need early on in the season, so... - So do they need to scout or just kind of know they've arrived earlier than usual?

- Scouting is always important.

We really emphasize integrated pest management.

And so using traps is key, but also knowing the development of those pecans.

So if they're in the water stage, the weevil will probe the nuts and they'll fall on the ground.

Well, that's not too bad if you've got a large crop.

But if they're starting to go into that dough stage, then they can lay eggs in there, they can be viable at that time.

And that's the worst because we can't do anything about 'em after they've already laid eggs in those pecans.

- Let's talk about production values and kinda what the market might look like this year versus last year.

- Okay, last year we did have a very strong crop, and it was in the... We forecast it to be in the 20-million-pound range.

I think it was probably a little bit less than that because the prices went down during native pecan harvest, and a lot of our growers didn't continue harvesting those native pecans because the value just wasn't there.

This year, we've had several different estimates.

It's always kind of a guess on where we're gonna wind up, but it started out about 13 million pounds in June at the Tri-State meetings.

That was their guesstimate.

And then in Texas, at their annual meeting, they said, "Ah, let's say, more like 8 million pounds."

But I think it might be in between there or maybe even a little bit more.

I'm always more optimistic.

I always have faith that things are gonna turn out better, but we'll see.

It's really difficult to know.

It depends on the quality, the pricing, and the weather.

So there's a lot to do with that production number at the end of the year.

- Well, we're hoping there's great weather for your upcoming pecan field day.

- Yes.

- Tell us all the details about that.

- Yeah, I'm excited.

We have a pecan field day coming up September 19th, and we like people to register.

It's a free event, but we want them to register so we can provide a dinner for them.

And so that's gonna be at Dr. Mike Smith's orchard near Cleveland, and this will be the first time we've had a field day at his orchard.

- And so Dr. Mike Smith was our pecan researcher for 35, 30 plus years, and so he's done most of the research on nutrition, crop load management, and anything else that's really helpful to our growers.

So it's gonna be exciting, informative field day, I believe.

- Okay, well, best wishes with that.

- Thank you.

- We'll look forward to hearing how it goes.

Thanks a lot, Becky.

We enjoyed our time out here on this beautiful morning.

- Yeah, thank you.

- And for more information on the upcoming pecan field day, just go to sunup.okstate.edu.

(upbeat music) Talking wheat planting now and soil fertility considerations for the upcoming growing season, here's Dr. Brian Arnall.

- It's that time of year when the cattle producers are putting wheat in the ground for grazing and graze out dual purpose and our grain only producers are figuring out what they're planning to do for their grain only wheat crop when it comes to fertility.

The problem is, right now, if we look at the grain prices, grain prices aren't great and the input prices are are still pretty high.

So a lot of the questions I'm getting right now is how do I manage my winter wheat fertility to maximize productivity, but really minimize my input and my input cost?

If we look at the grazing system, the one thing I'm gonna say is anhydrous ammonia is a cheap product right now is coming in at a low price.

Actually, most of the nitrogen fertilizer is a fairly decent price right now.

So if I'm grazing wheat and for graze out or dual purpose, I wanna make sure I have at least 50 to 60 units of nitrogen down that could be including residual to make sure I've got that nitrogen down so that I have a good fall growth.

If we get these fall rains like we're hoping to, so I got good fall productivity.

I would make sure right now we still have time to get that last minute soil sample in sent into your county extension office so that we know pH, phosphorus and potassium.

If your pH is off, we can't really line right now as far as we don't have the time to really get it incorporated and changed.

So what we would be looking at is making sure that we're able to band or broadcast phosphorus to accommodate for any low pH bots.

We also wanna make sure if we have low phosphorus that we're banding or broadcasting phosphorus, and the phosphorus right now for me is quite critical if we're looking at a grazing wheat because that phosphorus helps root exploration and early season growth.

And so don't limit your plant's productivity because your pH is low or phosphorus is low.

Look at your soil test results and look at OSU recommendations to see how much to apply.

We move into that in rate.

Talk a little bit more about that for our grazing wheat.

I still say 50 or 60 units right now.

I don't know how much fall rain we're going to have, how much productivity we're gonna have this fall.

So just put that much on.

If things look good and the cattle prices stay strong and everything looks good in the fall and early spring, then let's hit it a second time to try to get a little bit more growth and a little bit of more productivity in that last bit of game.

Our grain only producers right now, it's looking really tight as far as the input cost and that grain price.

So think about what we're doing.

Let's make sure that we're not just doing extra.

If you look at the price of anhydrous or really urea right now, it's a pretty good price compared to what the expectations are this spring.

I'm going to warn folks though, all of our work that shows if you put all your nitrogen up front and pre-plant, you do not make the same yield as if you split or wait for all nitrogen in season.

So let's balance that cost of having a cheap nitrogen up front and something in season.

I'll say if you're able to pre-order now so that you have that spring nitrogen or late fall nitrogen, I would rather see you delay it, but I understand when nitrogen is cheap, sometimes you have to take that economics evaluation into consideration.

For more information on soil fertility, on winter wheat, both grazing and grain only, go to the sunup website at okstate.sunup.edu.

(upbeat music) - Wes Lee here with another edition of the Mezzanine Weather Report.

Hot weather is something we as Oklahomans just have to deal with in summer, but every now and then we get lucky with a summertime cold front that makes it this far south.

That should be the case this weekend as seen by the forecasted highs for Saturday.

Monday highs should even be lower than this.

If we look at the summertime average highs since May for the state, you can see that we spent more time above the 15 year average represented by the zero line than we did below it.

Plants have a certain temperature range that they are able to grow effectively.

For cotton, that would be a range from 60 to 100 degrees Fahrenheit.

The term for this range is the effective degree days or heat units.

Here are the accumulated degree days for three locations in Oklahoma with cotton planted on May 10th.

You can see that 2,451 degree days have accumulated at Altus, just under 2000 at El Reno, and just over 2100 at Medford.

Comparing this year to the previous five years, they are all well above the average.

- This indicates that heat will probably not be a limiting factor this year for cotton, and yields will be determined by moisture or other factors.

Gary is up next with an August rainfall summary.

- Thanks Wes, and good morning everyone.

Well, I hope we're getting rainfall this weekend and then early next week, because we're in big trouble in parts of the state: we have drought expanding and intensifying.

Let's get right to that new map.

Well, as you can see, we have more of that, the D1, D2 drought, the moderate to severe drought, but also now across the southwestern quarter of the state, we have extreme drought, that's that red color, and that's basically a 1 in 33-50 year event.

So we're really starting to get serious down across that part of the state, but we also have drought expanding up into north-central Oklahoma and also over into southeastern and south-central Oklahoma.

In other words, it's just really dry.

It's pretty obvious why we're so bad off down there in southwest Oklahoma, when you look at that consecutive days with less than 1/4 inch rainfall map from the Mesonet, down there across Mangum, in that part of the country, we do have 85 days going strong without at least 1/4 inch of rainfall in a single day.

As we go over to the east of there, down into the Red River region, anywhere from 36 to 52 days, it varies, but that's just a long time without significant rainfall.

We can take a look at what we've had for rainfall on the Mesonet since August started, and we can see right there along the Red River, all the way from over in the far southwest to the far southeast, just not a lot of rainfall in that blue area.

In some cases less than 1/10 inch, and that's really bad for August when you have all that heat going on.

Unfortunately, it shows up even better on the percent of normal rainfall map for that same timeframe.

Lots of that region along the Red River.

southwestern quarter of the state, Other parts of the state as well, less than 25% of normal rainfall for August, and some cases less than 10% of normal.

And again, when you have all that heat, and you have very little rainfall, that really does exacerbate those drought conditions.

So like I said, I hope we're getting pretty good rainfall and especially those areas that need it the most.

That's it for this time.

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

(upbeat music) - We're joined now by our ag economist, Dr. John Michael Riley, to take a look at the markets.

And last time you were on, we talked about the latest WASDE report.

Give us a recap of what that looked like.

- Yes, as you may recall, soybeans, no way to put it lightly other than say got a kick in the pants that day, or just a strong report from a production and a carryover standpoint, just large numbers, larger than the market even expected, sentiment had a little bit of a tailspin.

They've largely recovered from that and it's leveled out, but that was the big news of the day.

Corn and wheat, for the most part, no big news, no positive strong, negative strong, but they tended to do pretty well coming outta the report, kind of counter of what soybeans were.

And actually, cotton had a little bit of a bright spot there with regard to lower acres expected and lower carryover, but mostly benefited that day, and then just kind of tailed off shortly thereafter.

- After the report came out, it's been a couple of weeks, how has the market reacted since to the news that you mentioned?

- Well, I'll start with cotton, because in all the cloudiness for these four crops, it seems to have a bit of a sunshine, really benefited last week and has strengthened in terms of overall price.

Actually popped above 70 cents a pound in the last day or two.

Really getting back to the prices that we were seeing in early to mid-July, A lot of that has been the US dollar.

Cotton benefits strongly from how the dollar is relative to other currencies, and the dollar has seen some weakness, and that has elevated cotton prices.

Another thing to keep in mind with that is recent kind of indications from the Federal Reserve that they may be lowering interest rates.

That typically is a positive for the economy.

The economy's been, stock markets have been improving, the spillover there's that consumers may have a little bit more ability to spend, and cotton's gonna be one of the bigger ones to benefit from that.

- Last time we mentioned soybeans, that was the big news.

How are things looking in the bean area?

- Kind of alluded to it just a moment ago, but I'll just say, they really fell off, dropped about 40 cents in the day of and the day after.

They have largely leveled off, really just kind of evened out since then.

If you will look at current prices, maybe a positive of 10 to 20 cents in terms of where they were at from the lows that they reached in the aftermath of that report.

For the most part across Oklahoma, prices are in the mid to upper 9s, and that's kind of where we're at with futures right now as well.

- We are gearing up for wheat planting.

Obviously, it's corn harvest time.

How about wheat and corn?

- Well, wheat has been under a little bit of pressure, so has corn.

It's kind of hard to really pinpoint what's going on.

I think it's just more of that dead cat bounce, as the market analysts sometimes say, coming outta that report.

They benefited in the day of, kind of run counter of soybeans.

Since then, fallen off.

Wheat, a little bit of pressure from overseas markets.

Corn, crop tours are happening, and I think it's just that continued expectation that we're gonna have such a big corn crop.

- All right, well thanks for keeping an eye on it for us, and we'll see you again soon.

(light upbeat music) - [Narrator] Did you know OSU Extension supports Oklahoma farmers and ranchers with mental health resources and programming?

If you or anyone you know is experiencing mental health challenges, call the Comprehensive Crisis Response Lifeline at 9-8-8, or go online to the OSU Extension website dealing with farm stress.

For more information about local resources, suicide prevention, finances, or disaster recovery, just go to sunup.okstate.edu.

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

This week and next week's topic is beef quality assurance or BQA.

This week we talk more about the specifics of the program and next week we'll get into the positive impacts of beef quality assurance.

So what does this program, how does it work?

Basically, BQA is a national program that gets implemented at the state level.

BQA is a program that is systematically updated and it merges common sense, best practices along with scientific knowledge we have about beef production to ensure consumers that cattle are raised, or cattle are raised for food under the best possible management, the best circumstances, and it sends a signal to consumers of beef that the entire industry is willing to do what it takes to ensure a safe, wholesome, energy-dense, nutritious product for the consuming public.

The BQA certification is not mandatory in the cow-calf segment or the stocker segment of the beef industry, but we find most feedlots are actually BQA certified since most packers want to buy from BQA certified feedlots.

So if producers at the cow-calf level are interested in actually selling weaned calves through branded programs or VAC-45 programs, something, for example, like the Oklahoma Quality Beef Network, BQA certification is necessary to enroll those calves in those programs.

And we've got a strong history over the past 20 years in Oklahoma showing the additional premiums on weaned calves that have been through the OQBN protocol.

So there is some possible to capture greater market share, get greater value for weaned calves if producers are willing to get BQA certified, and the BQA certification process is fairly easy to accomplish.

Producers can go online to the website shown at the bottom of the screen, or contact your local extension office or potentially reach out to Dr. Barry Whitworth, our state coordinator of BQA in Oklahoma.

And Barry's email address is also shown now at the bottom of the screen, barry.whitworth@okstate.edu.

The program is systematically updated, it's modernized at this point.

Current topics addressed in BQA are behavior and handling, biosecurity, herd health management, transportation, record keeping, nutrition, environmental quality control points, worker safety, and an emergency action plan.

With that, as always, I hope this helps, and thanks for joining us on "Cow-Calf Corner."

- Finally today, Paul will be here before we know it and so will fall calving.

For some guidance here, SUNUP's Kurtis Hair with our OSU Extension beef cattle specialist, Dr. Paul Beck.

- I don't know about you, but I can't believe it's already time to start thinking about fall weaning.

But Paul, that time is almost here.

So what are some things that producers need to consider as they get into fall weaning?

- Well, weaning or even receiving, you know, high-risk calves from a sale barn, if you're a stocker operator, can be extremely stressful.

Just a little bit of pre-preparation, getting things ready ahead of time can really take care of the stress on you, your crew that's working 'em, and the calves that you're processing.

- And I imagine one of the big things is just kinda the facilities, what you have working with on your area.

So talk a little bit about that.

- Yeah, you know, the first thing I do is we look at facilities, make sure our pens are back together.

If we work cows earlier in the summer, fixing the fences that they tore up, making sure the gates are all still swinging, and just taking care of those built up weeds that may have grown through the summer.

All those things can be tripping hazards or just make it harder to work the cattle through.

And another thing that we don't think of but that can really shut down the progress of weaning or working cattle is coming up on some hornets or bumblebees.

You know, everything shuts down once the first person gets stung.

So go through, police those areas, and make sure that, you know, those hives are taken care of before you start, because there are always some that do come in and nest, you know, through the summer when you're not using your facilities.

- So when it comes to like things in regards to medicine too, I bet that's obviously pretty stressful when it comes to the calves.

- Yeah, I always think of facilities.

- Pharmaceuticals, feed, and equipment.

- Mm-hm, yeah.

- So facilities, you know, is important.

The other thing that can really shut you down and slow you down, you know, is running outta medicine or not having the right medicine, having expired vaccines.

You know, we can really shut down progress if we have to send somebody into town.

We're trying to get things done during the cool morning and anything that delays our getting cattle worked and processed in a timely fashion, gets us working into the heat of the day.

Cattle start getting angry, crews start getting angry, and, you know, it's just really disruptive on the whole process.

- And you mentioned feed.

Talk a little bit about that.

What are some considerations there?

- Feed is really important, especially with high-stress calves and when we wean calves off from the cow.

If they're not familiar with the feeding facilities or milled feed, we can't just go get just a cheap sweet feed or something like that.

Even though those are palatable, we need to get a designed, receiving feed that is made for their nutrient requirements.

When we wean calves or bring in high-stress calves from a sale barn, for instance, feed intake will be very low or it can be, you know, half as much as what we would normally expect.

So, the concentration of the nutrients in our receiving ration need to be higher than what we would normally look for from just a regular supplement.

So, you know, higher protein, 16% crude protein instead of a 12 or, you know, like that standard five weight, 500-pound calf.

Higher in minerals because, you know, our normal mineral pack in a supplement will be set for cattle that are consuming adequate feed.

If the intakes are low, we want a higher quality and higher concentration of a lot of those important minerals and trace minerals in those diets.

Clean, good quality, palatable hay is also extremely important.

We need to get those calves back to eating as quickly as we can to really get them healthy and ready to respond to the vaccines and any other immune challenges that they will have.

And one thing to consider.

With calves that we're weaning from cows, if they're unfamiliar with the water sources and the feed sources, they're gonna have to go and search and find those feedstuffs and everything.

So, they may not even know what dry milled feed is.

So, you know, have your feed bunk set perpendicular to the fence, (feed clattering) so when they circle the fence and they're walking around looking for feed or a way out or whatever, they'll come to the feed bunk and stop there and they may like get a smell and taste of the feed right off.

Another thing you can do is in the weeks leading up to weaning is get those calves prepared and used to those facilities.

Bring the cow herd and the calves in and feed them in the facilities you're going to wean in.

And that gets those calves familiar with where they're going to be so it's not such a shock and not such a new environment whenever you bring 'em in and separate 'em from their dam.

- All righty, thanks Paul.

Dr. Paul Beck, OSU Extension Beef Cattle Specialist here at Oklahoma State University.

(cheerful upbeat music) - That'll do it for our show this week.

A reminder you can see us any time on our website and also, check out our YouTube channel, youtube.com/sunuptv.

From the Cimarron Valley Research Station at Perkins, I'm Lyndall Stout.

We'll see you next time at "SUNUP."

(cheerful upbeat music) (gentle music)