- Good morning everyone.

I'm Lyndall Stout and we have a great show lined up for you today on Sunup.

With prices so high at the sale barn weighing the pros and cons of creep, feeding your calves, does the extra effort actually pay off?

Plus our armyworms showing up in forages early this year and celebrating 75 years of Oklahoma Foundation seed stocks and its significance to agriculture in our state.

Grab your cup of coffee and get comfortable because an all new Sunup starts right now.

We begin this morning with Dr. Dave Lalman, our OSU extension beef cattle specialist.

And Dave, today we wanna talk about creep feeding.

You and I have talked about this topic before and why don't we refresh the memory of our viewers of, of what this is and kind of some of the questions you've been getting lately.

- Sure.

Well, a common practice in the beef cattle industry, I should say maybe an occasional practice in the beef cattle industry is to provide feed to calves that are still nursing their mothers and restricting access so the cow, so the cows cannot get in there and consume all the, all the feed.

That is what we refer to as creep feeding.

So we're just feeding those nursing calves and it historically, as I mentioned last time we discussed this, our recommendation has been that it's generally not cost effective, but we start getting more phone calls when cattle prices are high.

And as you know, we are in an era right now or a period of time where cattle prices are, are all time record high.

So we're getting quite a few questions about creep feeding.

- So Darrell says those prices are likely gonna continue to stay high at least through the end of the year.

So folks who may be considering this, how do you run the numbers and, and how do you make really an exhausting list of, of what the, the cost might be?

- So the, one of the first things to consider is that the longer you, you provide creep feed to calves, the more they learn to eat.

And yes, it will add to their weight gain, but generally speaking, calves will consume if it's, if it's like a 14% creep feed, very common commercial product available in nearly every feed store, they'll consume anywhere from about two and a half up to six or seven pounds of creep feed average per day.

The longer you creep feed them, the higher that number's gonna get, the higher the average creep intake is going to become.

One concern, one of these nuances is that a few feed creep feet for very long, those calves are gonna start to get fleshy.

So wanna avoid that.

I, I would say, you know, most of the research indicates that 60 to 90 days of creep feeding does not produce that situation.

The other thing, Lyndall that people need to consider is how good a quality diet do they have out there in the pasture and how much milk is their, are their mothers producing, the better the quality diet the calves have without creep feed.

The poorer the creep feed conversion is okay because you're basically swapping one good diet, one good part of the diet for another.

You're, you're, you're taking say milk consumption or high quality forage consumption or replacing it with an expensive creep feed.

- Give me an example scenario and then talk about the dollar value of gain, how that plays in.

- Okay, so if we assume average creep feed intake and average quality forage, that that conversion generally is around nine pounds of creep feed per one additional pound of calf weight gain.

Okay.

And then if you have $300 a ton creep feed price, that's 15 cents a pound, so nine pounds of creep feed to get additional pound of gain times 15 cents, a dollar 35.

So that would be your feed cost per pound of weight gain.

The value of gain right now, again, is probably higher than I have ever seen it before.

The value of weight gain is real close to $2 a pound.

So we've got a dollar 35 feet expense, we've got a $2 value of additional weight gain.

The thing we haven't considered yet is your labor, the time to put out the creep feed, set the creep feeder up, so on and so forth, monitor creep, intake.

- So get your pencil and paper out and really detail those numbers and and think about it.

- Yeah.

And, and we can provide access to a, a nice article that goes through all these nuances and kind of the range for each one of them that you might expect and what might influence them and they can use that information to make, you know, help make that those decisions.

- Right.

Great.

Kind of step by step how to map this out.

- Exactly.

- Dave, great information.

Thank you very much.

- Absolutely.

- And for a link to that article that Dave just mentioned, we have it for you at sunup.okstate.edu OSU extension's popular ranchers Thursday lunchtime series is back.

Join the OSU Beef Cattle Experts experienced ranchers and scientists to learn and share production management and marketing tips.

The Zoom webinars are all on Thursdays at noon and they're free, but you do need to register so you can receive the zoom link and more details.

Just scan the QR code on your screen, contact your county extension office or go to the sunup website for a direct link to registration talking insects now and why it's a good idea to go ahead and start scouting in your pastures.

Here's our forage specialist for extension, Brian Pugh to get us up to speed.

- I'm Brian Pugh, I'm the state extension forage specialist for OSU and today we're gonna be talking a little bit about head worms in sorghum as well as fall army worm in forages across the state.

So starting about three or four weeks ago, we did start to see significant moth flats in Oklahoma, started in eastern Oklahoma, but it's really covered the entire state now.

And those moth flights lead to young larva, young army worms that consume forage and again, some of our crops such as sorghum and corn.

So fall army worm is probably one of our most common pests that we see annually in forages.

Sometimes we see them earlier in the year like, like this summer.

Sometimes they're a little later in the year, but they essentially, those young caterpillars go through six different stages as they molt.

We call those in stars and as we get into those later in stars, those large caterpillars, they can consume a significant amount of forage.

We can tell a fall army worm by the inverted Y that you can see on its head.

That is a key identifying characteristic for fall army worm.

Then we also see again the sorghum head worm is really a complex of multiple species.

The three most common that we see here in Oklahoma are fall army worm, but also corn ear worm and sorghum web worm.

So the lifecycle of the fall army worm, which I'll talk a little bit more about, which we're seeing rampant in forages right now.

Female MAWs, essentially they don't live here, they can't over winter here.

So they're starting in the Gulf coastal states.

Each year they begin to migrate northward.

They go through their cycle, they lay eggs.

We have a series of caterpillars molting through those end stars.

They then pupate in the soil for about two weeks and then we have another crop of moths that fly further northward.

And that's how we see this progression every year.

Again, some years that's later, that might be August or September years where we have really good conditions for the fall army worm and good quality forage for them to feed on.

That tends to happen a little earlier.

Earlier, like what we're seeing this year, thresholds for fall army worm and pasture is about three or four half inch long larvae per square foot.

And the reason that we would recommend you scout early and try to catch those larvae before they're half inch long is because they're much easier to control with an insecticide application.

If we allow those larvae to get larger than that, again, it takes higher rates and oftentimes we don't control all those larvas.

So early scouting is the key when we're looking at fall army worms, one of the easiest ways to scout for fall army worms in forages is actually with your normal clothes hanger.

And again, if we take that clothes hanger and make it into a square that's about two thirds of a square foot, we know our threshold in forages is three to four half inch long caterpillars per square foot, which would be two to three half inch long caterpillars per coat hanger, so to speak.

So this is a really handy scouting tool if you're out in the field and you're trying to count how many larva are there and decide if we've hit that economic threshold for an insecticide application.

So when we look at thresholds for sorghum head worm, it's gonna be a little bit different than what we see in pasture.

If it's in a vegetative stage and we're seeing feeding on the leaves, it really needs to be more than 40% of the plants have damage to the leaves before we would even consider an insecticide application.

If we're in that heading stage, especially in that flowering or milk stage, then what we would want to do is actually scout the number of caterpillars per plant.

We would be looking at somewhere around two caterpillars per head would be sufficient threshold to warrant an application of insecticide.

One of the, the key characteristics that we look for when we're scouting for those very small caterpillars is what we call window painting.

And that's essentially where a caterpillar is not large enough to consume the entire leaf surface, so it just scrapes some of the vascular tissue off and it leaves an area that's actually white.

It gives that leaf a window paint appearance from a distance, and that's your first sign that you do have fall army worms present.

If you want more information about insecticides that are labeled for control of fall, fall army worm or sorghum head worms, contact your local county extension educator and they can help you with that.

And additionally, if you want more information, there will be fact sheets linked on the OSU sunup website on the management of fall, army worm and pastures and hay fields, as well as the management of sorghum head worms.

- Hello Oklahoma.

This is Emma White, your Mesonet agricultural outreach specialist here with your weekly Mesonet weather report.

This past week underwent the transition from comfortable temperatures from the cold front last week to quite hot by midweek.

Unlike last weekend, right now, you're probably all eager to turn down that air conditioning just a little bit more.

Speaking of high temperatures, a few weeks ago I showed a map of Oklahoma of days with maximum air temperature above a hundred degrees Fahrenheit.

It showed that the a hundred degree days had not yet reached central Oklahoma.

The updated news is that those days above a hundred degrees Fahrenheit are now experienced in the central and even eastern parts of the state stay hydrated folks, the Oklahoma summer is upon us.

Though not every county has reached a temperature of a hundred degrees Fahrenheit.

The heat index has reached above a hundred degrees Fahrenheit in all parts of the state except Cimarron County.

So we have definitely been feeling that outside is above a hundred degrees Fahrenheit many times this summer.

Some parts of this state have even experienced heat indices above 110 degrees Fahrenheit since we're expecting little precipitation and we're not expecting heat relief in the next several days.

Let's take a look back at the monthly normal to compare July with previous years, the average maximum air temperature for July, 2025 compared to that of 2010 through 2024 was a bit cooler by zero to three degrees Fahrenheit in most parts of the state.

Only a few areas such as down in southeast Oklahoma saw above average temperatures in July of 2025.

However, the average maximum heat index or feels like temperature in July was above average in most parts of the state speaking to the high humidity in July.

This final map shows the departure from average of precipitation in July.

The July rainfall in 2025 is lower than the 2010 through 2024 average in most parts of the state.

Gary McManus is up next with your state climatology report.

- Thanks Emma and good morning everyone.

We'll fresh off our little fall preview we had last weekend.

We're back to the heat and mostly dry weather.

Let's get right to that new drought monitor map and see where we are.

Well those rains we had last weekend targeted perfectly, that area in southwest Oklahoma that had gone back to the, the D zero or abnormally dry conditions, that yellow area on the map, but now it's completely gone.

So a perfect strike.

But if you take a look at the 30 day rainfall map across Oklahoma, just look for those light greens and blue areas.

That's where we had a little bit less rain over the last days.

So we do see that from, again, parts of southwest Oklahoma, closer into south central Oklahoma, I guess, and then up into central, into north central Oklahoma and just to the southeast of the Oklahoma City metropolitan area.

Now why am I a little bit worried about flash drought as we look over the next few weeks?

Well, we are in August and we know what can happen in August.

And if we take a look at next week's outlook, we do see increased odds, greatly increased odds of above normal temperatures, which doesn't help droughts conditions.

And also we have below normal precipitation amounts favored, especially across the northwestern area of the state down in the southwest Oklahoma.

So these two outlooks would not be good for the state of Oklahoma and the drought prospects.

So any rainfall we can get will help us get rid of those worries about drought.

But we have to remember it is August and Oklahoma.

That's it for this time.

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

- Hello and welcome to the Market Monitor, I'm OSU Ag economist, John Michael Riley.

And to start things off, unfortunately the news still remains that markets are largely under pressure.

If we look at our, our summer crops for the most part, corn, soybeans, cotton, all seeing downward movement throughout the last couple of weeks, a lot of that having to do with supply concerns.

For the most part, the market is expecting a really big crop of soybeans, a really big crop of corn.

We've discussed that in previous, in previous segments and that just continues to be the case with regard to cotton.

We've seen a little bit of a, of an increase right now as we're taping, but for the most part it's been under pressure as well.

A lot of that coming from a more expensive dollar.

So we export a tremendous amount of our cotton.

That higher dollar is weighing on the market for the most part.

Turning our attention back to soybeans and corn again, we've got some preliminary estimates from some private trading firms looking at a 53.6 bushel per acre soybean crop across the US and 188.1 bushel per acre corn crop.

Again, these are on the higher end of where we're at with USDA and speaks to this large crop that is expected across the US.

That being said, there are some pockets of concern as we look across most of the corn belt, which was where most of the soybeans and corn are grown.

We've got quite a bit of rain, this fallen across the Western corn belt, largely focusing in on Iowa, and that does raise some red flags potentially as we are currently in this critical growing stage.

And the corn crop and the soybean crop are in these, these really important developmental stages of that's gonna, you know, potentially impact yield.

But still the message is that that these two commodities are looking to be quite large.

Turning our attention to Oklahoma, the wheat crop finally is a hundred percent completed nationally, roughly 80% completed.

So still some of the northern plains are on harvest in terms of Oklahoma here with our corn and soybeans.

Corn crop is looking really good.

It's finally starting to catch up with where we're at with typical progress throughout the growing season.

We were behind, obviously with all the rains in the early stages of planting and the growing season, but we're starting to catch up a little bit right there.

Crop is, for the most part, looking really good.

Soybeans still a little bit behind.

Again, a lot of our soybean crop is double crop behind the wheat.

So those that late harvest with wheat has delayed some of that double crop, maybe even taken that off the board for some producers.

But overall, the soybean crop still a little bit behind crop progress or crop ratings lagging a little bit in here in Oklahoma.

And so some of that heavy rains throughout the early parts of the growing season, still having some impacts there.

While nationally the corn and soybean crop will look really good here locally in Oklahoma, soybeans not nearly as positive a a story on the, in terms of the condition ratings as it is relative to the the rest of the nation.

Well, that's gonna do it for me.

And in spite of these market woes, it really emphasizes the importance of farm management.

And until next time on the market monitor, I'm John Michael Riley.

- Good morning, Oklahoma, and welcome to Cow-Calf Corner.

Our topic this week follows up our topic last week in which we talked about what to expect from your butcher steer that you finished out.

What that led to was what do we expect to take home relative to specific cuts from the beef carcass?

And a couple other questions that we'll get to.

So first of all, as you see in the diagram on screen of the four major wholesale cuts that come from a beef carcass, the round loin ribbon chuck, the chuck or shoulder region is gonna be a little over 25%.

We're typically gonna get a lot of roast and stew meat from that particular cut.

The round is usually around 22 to 24% of that carcass.

And the ribbon loin collectively are the back meats and, and really have a lot of interest because that's where our really great steaks come from.

T-bones, KC strips, ribeye steaks, things like that.

But the ribbon loin collectively on average are a little under 27% of the carcass.

Now, the rest of what we take home is gonna be things like brisket, short plate, the flank, the shanks.

They're all small percentages of the carcasses you can see from the diagram.

So that gives you a rough feel for the approximate percentages that you're gonna take home of each thing.

Second question, and we had a lot of varieties of this question, is we all want more steaks.

Steaks are those premium cuts that come from a beef carcass, those muscles in the back that are really low in connective tissue and really what drive the value of a beef carcass based on the amount of marbling that's in there.

And if we are selling a butcher beef or a fed animal, often the big driver of the value of that carcass.

In reality, we know the ribbon loin are gonna be about 26.8 percentage of the weight or the hot carcass weight, but how many actual cuts of steak are we gonna get?

Now this becomes interesting.

Typically we say probably around two dozen ribeye steaks, around two dozen T-bones or strip loins.

But this really starts to vary.

It depends on how we want the carcass cut up.

A T-bone steak, for example, could be separated out into a strip loin as well as the filet.

It also depends a great deal on how thick we want our steaks cooked.

Most consumers prefer a steak that is between three quarters of an inch to an inch and a half thick.

Obviously with that 26.8% of our carcass that comes from the ribbon loin, the thickness of those steaks is gonna have a dramatic impact on how many steaks we actually take home.

So give consideration to that.

Third big question that we had is how much fat to leave on the carcass.

The first thing I would say, fat is a good thing with regard to taste.

The perception of tenderness.

The juiciness and flavor that we get from cuts of beef fat is gonna be a driver of that.

It's gonna contribute to that.

If we leave more fat on the carcass, it's actually gonna lead to less evaporative loss through the aging process.

If we leave more fat on the carcass, it's gonna increase the expected yield than the amount of take home product that we get.

But trimming off more fat, while it might take away from the amount of yield that we get from the carcass, is also gonna mean that's less external cover we have to trim off at home.

With regard to this topic, I always say go for an optimum.

If I'm having ground beef made, I like an 80 20 mix.

If I think about a ground beef patty, something I'm gonna cook on the grill, once that is ground up, that 20% fat that is actually in that burger breaks down just like marbling does in a steak and leads to a very satisfying eating experience.

I encourage you, if you're having a steer or heifer carcass processed, talk to your meat packer, talk about the cutting specs, exchange some information and have a dialogue.

You're gonna find your packers want you to be satisfied with what you take home.

Perhaps even after they've looked at that carcass and have a feel for it, they're gonna be able to offer some information that's gonna help guide you through the cutting specs that you give them, which often I believe, will lead to a more satisfying eating experience once you get home.

Hope this helps, and look forward to seeing you again next week on Cow Calf Corner.

Thanks for joining us - Finally today, A 75 year milestone, not only for agriculture in our state, but also the actual seeds at its very core.

Fresh cinnamon rolls made with flour from Oklahoma State University developed wheat set the stage.

So very glad to be celebrating 75 years here this morning.

As the State Secretary of Agriculture, Blaine Arthur helps kick off the 75th anniversary of Oklahoma Foundation.

Seed stocks, a non-profit arm of OSU created in 1950 that bridges OSU Plant breeders and certified seed growers.

- The researchers that work in the department and and in the college develop new technologies, in this case, plant varieties, but they have to take that small quantity that they work with and develop and make it into a quantity that is, you know, suitable, usable by the industry.

And that's the role foundation seed takes.

So they'll take 20, 40, 50 pounds of seed that Dr.

Carver gives them and they will grow it out in larger quantities.

- The seed filling these bags is cleaned and purity is maintained.

So seed inventory can then be scaled up in fields like this one in Kay County and eventually grown more widely by producers and it's working.

OSU developed.

Varieties now make up 70% of all wheat planted in Oklahoma and a growing share in Texas.

- The farmers need to know that what they're growing is adapted and will do well in Oklahoma, has a disease resistance, has the quality attributes that we need.

And so that's how we ensure it is.

We breed it here, we test it here, and then we make sure that what we deliver to them is that good quality seed.

- And it's not just wheat.

The Lasley family has been working with foundation seed stocks on peanuts for generations.

OSU honored the family at the celebration for a partnership that's now lasted 70 years and is still going strong.

- We are creating new plant varieties.

We are working with the industry to disseminate those plant varieties that are out there.

And so when I think about really what, what is a university all about, it's hard to think of a better example of what's happening here at Foundation Seed of that attempt to create new technology and new ideas and then work with the industry to get it out there to the people who really need it.

And so I'm so proud of the work that happens here.

- In addition to wheat and peanuts, Oklahoma Foundation seed stocks also distributes certified seeds for mung beans, oats, rye, barley, and Bermuda grass.

75 years of evolving with roots in the past, seed in the present, all to ensure production for the future.

That'll do it for our show this week.

A reminder, you can follow us on our website, our social media, and also stream us anytime on our YouTube channel.

As we leave you today, we wanna give you a few highlights from the recent closing assembly at the 104th State 4H Roundup held recently on the OSU campus.

I'm Lyndell Stout.

We'll see you next time at Sunup.