(upbeat music) - Good morning, Oklahoma.

I'm Kurtis Hair, and welcome to SUNUP.

With extreme heat and flash drought forcing many producers to use their summer crops as forage, what's the nutrient value in those crops once they're baled?

OSU Extension Soil Nutrient Specialist Brian Arnall answers that question and more.

(upbeat riff) - The issues right now, and many've already had to face the challenges of a failed corn crop, failed sorghum crop, failed soybean crop.

And the question rise, you know, "Do I bale, do I graze, or do I leave for stubble on the field?"

And there's a lot of aspects that go into that conversation.

There's aspects that I can't give any recommendations on.

You've got the conversation of, you know, just leaving that residue on the surface.

What's the value of that?

I have cattle I have to feed, and so, there's added value to that.

The one aspect of the conversation I could bring some information to is the value of nutrients within that residue, that stubble.

And that also goes off to our forage crop.

So one thing to consider is that when we're baling a failed corn, sorghum, or soybean crop, there's a significant amount of nutrients that are in that crop.

And so, typically, if you were just harvesting for grain, you're leaving a lot of that residue that contains phosphorus, and potassium, and calcium in and on the soil, for it to degrade, and slowly work back through the degradation of organic matter into the soil system.

But when you bale a crop, especially when it's green, you're taking all the nutrients off and taking it with you.

And so, looking at the concentration of nutrients within, say, a bale of corn or silage, you have some numbers that we can work with.

So if you're doing silage, and so, that's a wet-weight basis.

So a lot of the stuff I'm gonna talk about is basis of wet, kinda dry, or really dry.

So a wet-weight basis of corn silage at current market price of NPK and sulfur, there's about 20 to $25 worth of nutrients per ton of silage.

Now, that's about a 55, 60% moisture content.

If we go all the way to dry basis, so I'm measuring an absolutely dry crop, and so, that value, because you're concentrating it per dry ton and you don't have the moisture, that value goes up to 90 to $95 of nutrients per ton produced.

But if you look in the middle, let's say you're at a hay moisture concentration.

Most of the literature and most of the documents would say that you have somewhere between 40 and and $50 of nutrients per ton in each of those bales.

And so, now we have to think about that, one, if I'm selling the hay to somebody else, am I getting enough to recover the cost of baling?

Which, by some estimates, is between 25 and $35 per bale just to bale up, that's net wrap, that's diesel, that's time, plus the nutrients, plus everything else to replace.

Because ideally, if I'm removing a nutrient from my location, I have to account for that either as a replacement, or it's a value that I'm selling off.

So, the cost right now for, let's say, baling of failed corn, sorghum, or soybean that's not silage, and it's not dried down all the way.

It's about $40 a ton, so you gotta take that into account when looking at selling it.

Now, if I've got a herd of cattle that I'm trying to maintain, the value per ton now goes up because I'm trying to maintain my herd.

And of course, if we're looking at this hay, whether it's something that's been baled up from a corn or sorghum, we have to start thinking about nitrates.

I know it's been talked a lot about this on SUNUP, but if you've got a corn or sorghum crop out there that's failed, or if you have a lot of Johnson grass or millet that's out in your meadows that you're swathing, make sure you get that nitrate test.

Go into your county extension office, speak with them, and get a nitrate test.

Also look at the quality.

Depending on what we have, we may have a lot of stock.

So a soybean can have decent value, but there's a lot of stock in that soybean.

Again, go to your extension office, get a good hay sample, and have that tested for quality analysis (bouncy music) just to make sure you know what you have so that you're getting adequate value out of it.

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

After such a hot, dry summer, last weekend's cool front brought us some short-lived relief from the heat.

It also brought some long-awaited rain to a large part of the state, although it was not equally distributed.

With this front, it was mostly a north versus south distinction.

Here is the seven-day rainfall map from Wednesday morning.

Most of the northern half of the state, including the panhandle, had one to three inches.

Prior, in Mays County, almost reached five inches.

- But the Southern half mostly ranges from zero to less than an inch.

The average distance between our Mesonet sites is about 18 miles.

Within that distance rainfall can vary dramatically.

What if you don't live near a site, but still wanna get an estimate of how much rain fell?

The colors on our rainfall maps come to us from our friends at the National Weather Service River Forecast Center in Tulsa.

It is radar estimated rainfall calibrated by the Mesonet rain gauges.

By zooming in on the maps, you can see that the colors form blocks or pixels that represent a two and a half mile square.

By then looking at the color legend on the left of the map, you can get a pretty good idea of rainfall in your location.

Now here's Gary with a longer rainfall summary.

- Thanks, Wes, and good morning everyone.

Well, the rainfall that we received over the last week was certainly welcome, but unfortunately, for Southern Oklahoma, they just simply didn't get enough.

Let's get straight to that new drought monitor map and see where we're at.

Well, some wonderful rains across that Northern part of the state did alleviate the drought conditions up that way, especially in Northwest Oklahoma, and parts of Northeast Oklahoma, where that D3 drought had started to take hold.

In fact, in the far Western Oklahoma, we do have a small area of D0 there, in Southern Ellis county and Northern Roger Mills county.

That's not drought at all.

So we've now alleviated drought in that part of the state just a little bit, and also in far east central Oklahoma where Salazar received that big rain.

So we do have a little bit of the state out of drought, completely.

Still in danger of going back to drought if we don't get more rainfall, but then we also see more of that extreme drought, the reds, down across Southern Oklahoma.

So that area that missed all the rain, unfortunately, is ramping back up once again.

We can see that rain on the 30 day rainfall accumulation map from the Mesonet across Northern Oklahoma, a little bit down in the Southeast Oklahoma, a little bit dotted here and there across the Southern half but mostly across the Northern half of the state.

Now, if you go way up into Northeast Oklahoma, the very, very far reaches, they also received less than an inch over the last 30 days.

So we're simply gonna have to keep our eye on this area, all across that far Northeastern and other parts of Northern Oklahoma, but that's Southern part of the state, up into central Oklahoma, that's where we're really hurting at the moment.

The areas that have received very little rainfall over the last 30 days.

And in some cases, almost 60 days.

It shows up all too well on the Percent of Normal Rainfall Map from the last 30 days that Southern half of the state for the most part in dire straits, once again, and we also see that up in far Northeast Oklahoma.

All those reds and oranges not good news for the agricultural community in those areas.

Now when the rains went away, so did that cooler weather.

We're now on our new heat wave up to three, four, or five days across the state, but look down in the Southern parts of the state.

They never received that relief.

So, the heat's been unabated in that area going on for more than 35 days across Southern Oklahoma with those high temperatures up in the nineties and one hundreds.

So with the heat in full force, once again, lack of rainfall forecast for the state, I'm afraid we're going to have more droughts start to develop across the state and also intensify.

So that's something we're definitely gonna keep our eyes on.

That's it for this week.

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

- As we move into August, it's extremely important for producers to evaluate their farms and ranches when it comes to risk.

OSU Extension Ag Policy specialist, Amy Hagerman, gets us up to speed.

- This is a great time of year to think about risk management and to plan risk management going forward into future years.

Producers need to look at their operation, look at their specific piece of property.

Think about the risks that are the biggest concern for them, and identify those pieces that they can implement into their operation to better manage those risks.

That could be price risk through, you know, something like futures and options, or through the Livestock Risk Protection Program if they have livestock.

They can be making sure they sign up for their ARC or PLC this fall whenever that opens up for the next crop year.

And it can also mean insurance products.

Do they have the kind of insurance coverage they need for the activities they have on their operation?

- Now that's risk management.

Now where we're talking about crop insurance, some of those dates have already passed, right?

- Yeah, so dates for both our wheat and our annual forage has already passed for this year, but certainly looking forward into the next year, and thinking about that next crop year, you know, a lot of those you'll wanna start thinking about in the spring particularly.

- So what does that mean for producers?

You know, it's really hot, dry right now, and is if drought extends, which it's probably predicted to do, further into the fall, what does that mean for those producers?

- So, definitely communication is absolutely essential.

Within 15 days, you need to provide a notification to your crop insurance agent of when you feel like that loss has really exceeded a point that you're gonna need an indemnity on your operation.

They're gonna need to go through their process.

- Make sure that they've got that loss documented before that land is converted to some other use.

So if you're wanting to convert that into another crop this fall or some other purpose that loss has to be done first before conversion occurs.

- Does pasture fall into that as well at all?

- So pasture has its own set of insurance programs and then it also has a set of disaster programs.

And many of our counties in Oklahoma are eligible, for example, for the Livestock Forage Program, which is, again a notification of loss, but that one doesn't have as tight of a deadline right now.

Producers have until just after the first of the year to get their application in for Livestock Forage Program on their operation.

And that's really to help offset costs of additional feeding, and we know that hay costs are really high right now.

- It's also really important for producers and landowners to think about disaster relief as well.

- Absolutely, we've already had several wildfires in the state.

We have the conditions, unfortunately, that we could have more.

Again, communication is really essential here.

So a notification of loss going to the FSA office to help start off some of those disaster programs for immediate relief.

Now, that can include a couple of things.

If livestock are lost, it can be the Livestock Indemnity Program, which again you've gotta have within 30 days, that notification of loss, and then documenting those losses of cattle before the carcasses are removed from the operation.

Then also if fence lines are damaged, the Emergency Conservation Program can be implemented in a county getting emergency relief to help rebuild some things that aren't typically covered.

Critical thing here is that it's an eligible natural disaster loss.

This is really related to sort of weather and natural disaster losses.

So things like wildfire are certainly covered under it.

Also flooding.

If there was flash flooding that caused some cattle to be lost.

Things like lightning strikes.

Also some predators.

Unfortunately, a lot of disease does not fall under that.

And so it is, you need to actually make sure that what you have experienced is eligible under the LIP program.

- And then you also have some information about emergency relief.

- Yeah, so the Emergency Relief Program is ongoing.

Where these other programs we've all talked about, these are ongoing programs.

They're available year to year.

This isn't one of those one-time programs.

So the Emergency Relief Program started in the spring with Emergency Livestock Relief.

Then we also had the Emergency Relief Program this summer for crop producers that had RMA coverage on their operation.

And now we're moving into a phase where we're going to be doing emergency relief producers who had NAP coverage on their operation.

And so those letters are coming out right now.

- Alrighty, thanks Amy.

Dr. Amy Hagerman AG Policy Specialist here at Oklahoma State University.

And if you'd like a link to some information she talked about, go to our website, sunup.okstate.edu.

(upbeat music) It's time to check in on the crop markets with our grain marketing specialist, Kim Anderson.

So Kim, what's the latest news?

- Well, we gotta go to the Black Sea area.

And this week the first shift loaded with wheat left a Ukraine port and was escorted out and went into Turkey for inspection.

They say that they'll be able to move about one ship per day and as we get out a couple weeks, maybe two or three.

But the wheat's starting to move and the crop's moving out of Ukraine.

You got Russia.

They're exporting their wheat.

We've talked about that before.

They're also look at their fertilizer exports.

Except for the ammonia, their exports are back to normal.

And then in the news is also the drought in the European Union area.

The Rhine River is low and they may have to stop export movement out of that Rhine River area and that'll impact German exports.

And Germany is a relatively large wheat exporter.

United States, they're watching the corn, the soybeans, the milo, the cotton production, those estimates.

And of course, next week the USDA Wall Street report comes out.

- So what market signals are you watching?

- Well, we're waiting on the Wall Street to see what those supply and to man estimates are.

Before that Wall Street comes out on Friday, we'll have the pre-release estimates.

Those always have an impact on the market.

And then on the charts for the futures contracts, we're watching the trends and the spreads on those charts.

- What price trends have been established?

- Well, if you look at the price trends for wheat, probably sideways.

Your cash wheat price, Northern Oklahoma, about $8.20, Southern Oklahoma, 7.60.

Look at that December contract for wheat.

It's trading between $8.25 and $9.

Current layo somewhere around 8.65 and sideways movement.

Corn cash for forward contract, $5.85.

Look at that December corn contract, 5.60 to 6.25.

Probably sideways movement there and trading somewhere around $6 now.

Soybeans, it's all over the board.

The last... - It's at 13.20 on that November, well, the November contract's at $14, cash forward contract 13.20.

Seven days ago, it was $13.

It went up to 14.80 and back down to 13.80.

So soybeans, I don't know that they have a trend.

They're just all over the board.

And cotton, slightly up, trading between 90 and 97 cents.

- What about the price spreads?

- Well, if you look at the spreads, they're relatively non-existent.

You look at that Kansas City, the September to the Dec contract, that's 8 cents.

Now to own wheat out to December for farmers, about 30 cents' cost.

Eight cents is not gonna pay that.

Corn, you got a 13-cent spread on the forward contract Dec to the May contract.

Carry for that's about 36.

Soybeans, you've got an 8-cent spread between the November contract and the July contract.

Cotton, between the December contract and the May contract, you've got a minus 6 cents.

There's no carry in the market relative to the future prices.

- So what do these trends and spreads tell you?

- Well, if you look at the trends, I think they're telling us that the market's settling down a little bit.

You look over the last few years, It's the most uncertain times I think we've had for the last 40 years.

So the trends, I think we're settling down a little bit.

The spreads tell me that they want to buy the product now.

So they're not paying on a hedge or a forward contract on out past harvest.

They're not paying the farmer to store it.

The commercials wanna own it now.

- All righty, thanks, Kim.

Kim Anderson, grain marketing specialist here at Oklahoma State University.

(whimsical music) - Good morning, Oklahoma.

Welcome to Cow-Calf Corner.

Well, drought is impacting us pretty dramatically and among the hard decisions that we're faced with right now in the cow-calf business is potentially having to liquidate or cull some cows.

Now it doesn't come without a lot of thought put in, but the upside and the benefit if we do eliminate some cows, we're gonna ease up on our grazing system and allow the long-term health of those stressed pastures to recover a little sooner, and save back some of that forage and cover.

And the other benefit is just reducing our feed bill.

So today we address cow culling criteria, and a lot of these ideas have been around forever, but we're gonna relate 'em to what we face right now this summer.

First thing that I would cull cows on right now would be their pregnancy status.

If I've got heavy bred cows I'm gonna want to keep a hold of those the longest.

Short bred cows are gonna come second to that.

But if I've got a bunch of open cows around right now that would be my first culling criteria.

From our high national cow inventories in 2018 we're down about 6%.

We know we're seeing more cows go to market almost on a daily basis at this point in Oklahoma and a lot of other parts of the country.

That lower cow inventory that we're gonna be looking at in the future is gonna equate to fewer calves on the market and higher value per pound of those calves that are gonna go to market in the next few years.

So if I've got some heavy bred cows, those are the ones I want to hang onto.

Those are the cows I'm gonna be able to capture value out of the calves produced the soonest.

Second culling criteria that we get into right now is just age of cows.

We typically think about cows coming into their prime at about four years of age, or when they're raising that third calf.

Typically cows at about 10 are gonna start to break down, be more likely to suffer from one problem or another.

So if I can, I'm gonna tend to keep my younger cows, or those cows that are in the prime of production as opposed to the older cows I'm dealing with.

Third thing is just orneriness and bad dispositions.

I could tell some stories here about growing up with certain breeds of cattle, but Cow-Calf Corner's not the time to get into that.

Basically, if we've got cows that are hard to work with, hard to catch, or aggressive in their behavior, we might have made excuses for 'em when times were good and we had a lot of grass, but right now they're out of excuses.

The next topic I get into is just the oddball type of cows.

Do we have cows out there that got bad udders, bad mouths, bad teeth, bad legs, some kind of issue with them.

Maybe they don't shed hair and they can't handle the summer heat in Oklahoma very well.

Whatever it is about 'em it makes 'em an oddball, or makes 'em nonconforming, I'd get rid of those kind of cows.

And the fifth thing that we address today is if all your cows are four years old, tight bred, due to calve soon, you got no issues in any of them, And you've figured out you need to get half of 'em off your feed bill, that benefit that we've talked about on Cow-Calf Corner before of just keeping production records.

If we do nothing else, that at weaning each year we weigh the calves, we weigh the cows, and we preg check the cows.

Over time, we can take a look at that and figure out what percentage of our cows' mature weight, both on a herd-wide and an individual-cow basis that they're weaning off.

Most herds are gonna range somewhere from the low 30s to 50% or better of their mature weight they're gonna weigh off.

Let's say theoretically.

- We've got a herd that we've figured out we average weaning off or cows average weaning off 45% of their mature weight and on an individual basis, our cows range from 35 to 55% of their mature weight weaned.

Well, if we get rid of half of them, let's go identify those cows that are sitting in here from 35 to 45%, we take them off, get rid of them.

We've cut our feed bill in half.

And the positive light at the end of that tunnel is we still own the most productive and best half of our cows.

I hope this helps.

Thanks for joining us on Cow Calf Corner.

(upbeat jazzy music) - Cattle numbers are falling.

So Derrell, what's the midyear cattle inventory report showing?

- Yeah, the July cattle inventory report that USDA released confirms that cattle numbers are falling.

The all cattle and calves inventory was down about 2%.

You know, on the beef side, we're really looking at the beef cow herd was down about 2.4% continued, you know, liquidation as we've seen in the last several years but accelerated by the drought.

The replacement heifer number was down three and a half percent.

So, that really has implications for our ability going forward.

And if you look at the other inventory categories of other heifers, steers, and calves adjusted for the numbers in the feed lots, the feeder supply was, you know, estimated feeder supply was down about 2.9%.

- Well, the heat wave that's still going on but really in July was really, really tough in Oklahoma.

So how did that impact markets in Oklahoma?

- You know, we saw a lot of movement of cattle off in July.

Markets were overwhelmed.

We got a lot of anecdotal reports of auctions that were full of cows, even feeder cattle numbers were up a little bit and that did impact the market.

You know, again, markets were overwhelmed.

And so we did see a sharp drop in the cull cow prices, in particular, a little bit of drop in feeder cattle prices.

Both of them seem to be recovering a little bit by the end of July, but you know, we're continuing to see fairly large volumes of cattle given this time of the year, we just don't have a lot of choices.

- Has drought changed the overall market outlook going forward for the rest of the year?

- You know, it's changed some aspects of our outlook for the year.

Early in the year, we thought beef production was gonna be down two to two and a half percent.

Because the drought has continued to force, particularly more females, into the market.

Cull cow slaughter is up, heifer slaughter is up and so that's keeping beef production a little bit higher.

So we keep adjusting our expectation for beef production is still down but maybe only a half a percent down for the rest of the year as we get to the end of the year here.

So that part's changed a little bit.

Price expectations haven't really changed very much.

Prices are generally higher than a year ago.

We expect, in general, that prices will continue to trend higher as we see these cattle numbers continue to tighten.

- So when we moving into 2023, do you think the drought's gonna impact that marketing year?

- The drought is definitely gonna have an impact in 2023 and even beyond that, I think at this point.

The drought is severe enough, it's pushing us to a smaller inventory than we ever intended to be, really than the market warrants.

It's a little bit like what happened in 2011 and 2012 when we got a lot smaller and of course, if you remember, after that, there was a significant push to rebuild the herd.

I think we'll see that again here at some point in the future in 2023, perhaps 2024, where we'll try to save a lot of heifers, we'll cut cow culling.

That will really squeeze cattle supplies and beef production in the short run and that'll probably provoke a fairly strong market response in terms of some higher prices for a period of time.

- You know, given all of that how should producers, you know, plan going forward for the rest of the year?

- Well, we got an eye towards that recovery at some point, and we keep that in mind but really in the short run, we've just gotta be realistic about getting through this thing.

We're still very much on the defensive at this point.

It's August.

We're not gonna grow a lot more forage at this point even though parts of Oklahoma got some rain a week or so ago.

That's not gonna change things a great deal at this point.

And even if drought conditions ease in the fall, it won't grow a lot of forage.

So, I think we have to be realistic about how to get to really, you know, next spring and the next growing season.

So we've gotta think about how many cows, you know, can I take care of, how do I keep my pastures from being abused too badly in the process and actually think about the financial consequences of trying to keep more cows than you can.

- All righty Der, we'll check back in with you in a few weeks.

Dr. Derrell Peel, Livestock and Marketing Specialist, here at Oklahoma State University.

(upbeat jazzy music) And that about wraps it up for us today.

Now, if you saw something on the show you liked, you can always go to our website, sunup.okstate.edu, and follow us on YouTube and social media.

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

(upbeat jazzy music)