- Good morning everyone.

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

We'll sort out the recent news from Washington.

Expected to have a big impact on producers come February plus details on a treatment that has potential for addressing an invasive insect threatening the cattle industry.

And we get to meet our final 2025 Ferguson College of Agriculture distinguished alumnus.

Grab that hot cup of coffee because an all new Sunup starts right now.

We begin this morning with Dr.

Amy Hagerman, our OSU extension AG policy specialist, and Amy crop losses this year, 2025.

Pretty extraordinary, but there is some hope in Washington the last few days that you're here to talk about this morning.

So we'll just let you dive right in.

- Yeah, so as we look back on 2025, pretty exceptional losses, even as we think about it in historical terms, about $40 billion is estimated by Texas AgriLife.

So whenever we think about the programs that were implemented in 2025 to help address some of these losses, most of them are based on a marketing year average, which means those payments won't even be calculated until mid to late in 2026 with payments arriving late in 2026.

As a result, USDA put together this farmer bridge assistance program.

Now pro producer groups have been asking for this program for a while.

We've been contributing information on what those losses are going to look like in the year in order to make those calculations.

- There were some crops that were affected a lot more than others this year.

Give us some context there.

- Yeah, so as we look across our crops, anything that's pretty export dependent was hit pretty hard this year.

There's a couple of reasons for that and others certainly know these, but things better than I do and can go into the details.

But as we think about wheat as an example, we've really come down from some fairly strong prices a couple of years ago to expectations for 2026 that are under $6.

And we think about that in terms of strong crops elsewhere in the world, what that means for the supply of wheat across the world, and then also the price competitiveness of US wheat with tariffs that are in place.

We also think about soybeans.

One of our biggest markets, China didn't purchase a lot of soybeans in 2025 and that had impacts on our crops.

Now we do expect some stronger purchasing in 2026 from China for soybeans based on recent announcements.

But until those beans start rolling out of the United States, we would still expect, you know, some of the, the depressed prices in that crop as well.

Well also think about grain sorghum, another major export to China as an example.

And then we also think about cotton where we do export most of our cotton for processing in other countries.

So we have a combination of really strong production here in the United States, which is a good thing, but it's combined with more competition in the global market and as a result, we're seeing these depressed prices without a really strong expectation of price recovery in 2026.

- So a bridge is needed.

Thus this program that has arrived at the end of the year, what is the timeline and what does the application process look like for producers?

Hopefully streamlined?

- Yes.

Yes, it is a pretty streamlined process and we've seen that in recent years with other programs that farm service agency has really made an effort to streamline their applications based largely on information that producers already have in place at their farm service agency office.

Crop reports should already be in that.

These payments will be based on, they're gonna be a flat per acre payment as we've seen with other kinds of payments.

We can go back to market facilitation program, emergency commodity assistance program, other kinds of programs that had a similar structure.

Payments are expected to come out at the end of February.

Producers need to make sure that those crop reports, if they haven't filed them for any reason, are in by December, the end of December.

- So that is a pretty quick turnaround, especially in terms of, of how sometimes the government moves on things.

- Absolutely, and that's the benefit of being based on information that producers already have in place.

And you know, I've said it before and I'll say it again, record keeping is absolutely essential and TA staying on top of your regular crop reporting with Farm Service Agency - That February timeframe is intentional though, right?

To give kind of a shot on the arm for the next growing year.

- Absolutely.

If we think about our planting cycles and when we need to start incurring some of those expenses to put a crop in the ground, that end of February timeline is going to be really important to allow producers to make those decisions about their expenses for the coming year.

- So kind of wrapping all that up kind of words of guidance for producers who are, are following this and may be affected, - I think, you know, risk management, absolutely essential thinking about how you can spread your risks, thinking about managing costs of production.

You know, one of the, the things that we've seen throughout time with agriculture is that we tend to be a pretty hopeful bunch.

You pretty much have to be to be in this business and I think producers are gonna get out there.

They're gonna make the decisions that they can in the current market to manage their risks and to be in a better position when this market does upswing because it will.

- All right, Amy, great information.

Appreciate the notes of optimism as we wind down the year and we'll see you again very soon.

- Good morning everyone.

This is state climatologist, Gary McManus with your Mesonet weather report.

This is my last appearance for the rest of the year.

So we're gonna take a look at the last drought monitor map and look at some rainfall stats for the year thus far.

Let's get right to it.

Well, basically the same picture that we've seen the last few weeks, obviously no rainfall to improve things, but we have had a few areas like down in southeast Oklahoma and up in West Central Oklahoma where things did get a little bit worse.

So unfortunately things are going the wrong way as long as we don't get rainfall that's going to continue in that direction unfortunately.

And surprise, surprise, we're on another three plus week dry spell here in Oklahoma.

We can see from the Mesonet map the consecutive days with less than a quarter of rainfall.

We do see up to 23, 24 days, a little bit higher up in the panhandle and then over in west central Oklahoma, we're getting close to two months.

So this is the way we've been doing.

We get a rainfall and then we go three to four weeks without rain and then, you know, that's how the drought grows and leaps and fits.

And take a look at this December rainfall, at least through basically the first half of the month, we are on pace to see the driest December on record dating back to 1895 across the state.

If we don't get rainfall by the end of December or the end of 2025.

So we will be watching that forecast with very much and with a lot of interest, hoping we don't set that record contrast that dry December to the year thus far.

You know, this is going, going all the way back to January 1st through basically December 16th, and we do see pretty good rainfall across much of the state.

Again, following climatology about 15 to 20 inches in the panhandle all the way over to close to six inches over in the far eastern Oklahoma.

It's when you get into the departure from normal rainfall map from the Mesonet for that same timeframe that you can see those big surpluses across much of the state, five to more than 12 inches in some cases.

We do have a few deficits from Southwestern up into North central Oklahoma, but by and large we are seeing a very wet year regardless of what we've seen in - The last few months.

And we're on pace to be about the 18th wettest calendar year on record.

And that also dates back to 1895 seasonal snowfall thus far, again, very little in the way of snow across the state of Oklahoma.

We did see that the decent storm from Southwestern up through East central Oklahoma, a couple of storms up in northwestern Oklahoma in the panhandle, but by and large, once again much of the southern tier of the United States without snowfall, that's certainly not shocking for the early parts of the winter season.

So how does the rest of 2025 look?

Unfortunately, when you take a look at the Climate Prediction Center outlooks for that last week of the year, we do see greatly increased odds of above normal temperatures and below normal precipitation as shown here by the National Weather Service Office in Norman.

That would not be good news for drought concerns, you know, we just have to hope that that pattern changes quickly so we can start getting some moisture in here.

So if you haven't done the rest of your Christmas shopping, please ask Santa for some moisture.

We'll really take anything we can get from the Oklahoma Mesonet crew.

To yours, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

Encouraging news on the new world Screwworm front about options for treatment.

Should we see the pest enter the United States?

Merck announced last week that they had conditional approval for a product called Exalt.

This particular product is labeled specifically for New World screw worm as well as cattle fever tick.

Exciting news on treatment options.

Should we see new world screw worm enter the US?

I think it's important to note we're very fortunate this time that we do not have new world screwworm in the US but we do see continued presence of that particular pest in Mexico.

So with treatment options, we've been, we've been limited as we look at preparing for this potential entry in the US with our macrocytic lactone, commonly called dewormers of a certain of a certain category, usually ending in ectin.

This new product that we have as an option is called Exult, and it's produced by Merck.

This particular product is labeled for new world Screwworm and Cattle fever ticks.

So has very specific agents that it is labeled for and specific ages of cattle that it can only be utilized on.

It's important right now for producers to visit with their veterinarians to have these treatment options and whether they should be in incorporating those.

And at what point should we see new world Screwworm enter the US.

This particular product does have a fairly lengthy residue warning on it.

It has a withdrawal of 98 days and is a single use product, the active ingredient in this product.

We do have options for in other species, particularly for fleas and ticks in dogs.

Now, although we're excited to have this treatment on board, this is not something that I have the recommendation that in particular Oklahoma producers need to be rushing out and purchasing.

Certainly encourage discussion with your veterinarian in preparation.

Should we see new world screw worm enter the US.

New world screw worm remains an important issue for us across the livestock industry.

And so with that, we would encourage folks to take a look at our new World Screw worm website associated with Oklahoma State as well as this particular product's informational guidance on Merck's website too.

- Well, the weather's finally getting cool, and that means that those spring born calves are about to hit the stocker operations this winter.

And Paul, you recently had a cow calf newsletter topic where, you know, we often kind of think about calves on like stocker operations as just cheap game, but there's a lot more to it, right?

- Yeah, I've, I've, I've had a series of articles going through the cow calf corner newsletter talking about how management before finishing, whether it's during the cow cafe phase or during the stocker phase, influences the performance and carcass quality of calves as they go through finishing and, and subsequently go to our consumer as as beef.

So there's a lot of different places where the decisions that a producer makes has some long-term impacts.

And this latest article is talking about the influence of the, the stocker industry.

And it's more than just cheap gain, you know, the stocker operators trying to make money on, on margins between the buy and the sell, but he's also adding value to the entire beef industry in several different ways.

You know, we're taking a lot of calves that are quite variable in, in genetics and they're adding immune resiliency and robustness to those calves going from a unweaned calf to a larger yearling.

- So why is it often thought of as cheap gain and why is it not?

Actually, - Whenever we are just trying to minimize the dollars we spend for these calves out on grass, we may not get the cheapest cost of gain.

You know, just the forage base or pastures may be deficient in nutrients, whether it's a mineral or energy or protein.

We need, might need to spend some money on some supplements to increase their gain to get better performance.

We can also use growth promoting technologies ionophors, we can get about 10% increase gain no matter what the, the base gain would be for those animals.

Implants are quite the same, you know, we can get 10 to 20% improvement in performance for a very low investment no matter what the, the, the base rate of gain those cattle are going in.

So even if those cattle are, are gaining quite low rate of gain, we can get that 10 to 20% improvement in performance with either implants and ionophores.

If they're gaining quite a lot like on wheat pasture cattle, we will still get that 10 to 20% increase in gain for both of those technologies.

And the great thing about those technologies is they're different modes of action.

So that is additive.

So we can get 15 to 25% increase in performance with, with those technologies used together.

You know, one of the thoughts is if we add a supplement or we add these in growth promoting technologies, we will decrease the performance during finishing.

And that is not always true.

If we are looking at just providing a cheaper energy type supplement, we may increase performance as a stocker calf, but we're increasing the flesh of those calves.

Mm.

And it's probably not as efficient in increasing gain on pasture, even though it is cheap.

If we add a, a protein or a BA bypass protein supplement based on distillers grains, for instance, or, or some of those commodities, we mo will get a, a nice increase in gain from both the protein and the energy, but the influence on feedlot gain will, will not be as great.

So we won't see that decrease in performance when they hit the finishing stage.

- So there's just a lot.

And I guess the takeaways to all of this is that pretty much everything matters.

- Yeah.

And the decisions we make early in the process can have a huge influence later on.

One of the biggest influencers where we can spend money and decrease our cost of, of performance is in health vaccines, preconditioning, those all influence and have a much longer term influence on our final product and the profitability throughout the, the, the growing phase.

You know, if we're just trying to cheapen everything up, we may have lower total cost spent, but our cost of gain will be higher because, you know, those cattle aren't performing to the optimum level that they can perform.

- Alright, thanks Paul.

Dr.

Paul Beck, OSU extension beef cattle specialist here at Oklahoma State University.

And if you'd like some links to some information that Paul talked about, just go to our website, sunup.OKstate.edu.

- A pause now to tell our Sunup viewers just how important you are to us and to the people who care about you.

Stress on the farm and ranch is always present and some days you feel its impact much more than other days.

Stress, emotional wellbeing, resilience, finances, and farm transition planning are among the topics covered through OSU Extensions Farm Stress Resources collection.

We have a link for you at the sunup website, sunup dot OK state.edu and you can also scan this QR code or reach out to your local county extension office with questions.

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

We continue our series about building back better with replacement heifers, and this week our topic is mating decisions and how they impact gene combination value.

Up to this point, we have talked about how phenotype equals genotype plus environment.

Genotype can be split into two components.

There's that part based on additive genetic merit, the impact of individual genes that we think of as breeding value.

The other part that we get into a little deeper this week is gene combination value mating decisions are how we create gene combination value, gene combination value as opposed to additive genetic merit is the impact of how genes pair at loci all the way across the genome.

Best illustrated through an example, if we decide to use a Charolais bull on our set of Angus cows, we are making a mating decision to cross breed and we are going to see resulting F1 black nose smoked calves that have got a charolais gene paired with an Angus gene at every locus.

That's gonna create the biological phenomenon we think of as hybrid vigor as a result of gene combination value based on a mating decision.

Heterosis or hybrid vigor, we typically think about in terms of percentages, and if we relate this back to additive genetic merit.

Hybrid vigor builds off of additive genetic potential.

The categories of traits we discussed last week, reproductive traits that are low inheritability are where we get the most bang for our buck due to heterosis or hybrid vigor or mating decisions to create that gene combination value.

Typically heterosis benefits, reproductive traits in a big way.

Growth traits are moderately heritable, but we also see a moderate level of heterosis when we cross breeded those highly heritable carcass traits.

We don't benefit a great deal from gene combination value.

They're not influenced to a large extent relative to getting hybrid vigor.

So what does this tell us overall?

If we've analyzed our system, we've identified the things we need to improve in our next generation of cows based on what traits we're looking at, we may get more benefit from cross-breeding in something like reproduction.

If carcass traits are a big selection goal, breeding values selection based on EPDs or genetic merit scorecards probably take us more the direction we want to go.

Overall, we can use selection and mating decisions both to our advantage in building better genotypes in the next generation of replacement heifers.

As always, thanks for joining us this week on Cow Calf Corner.

Finally, today we learn why Malone Mitchell was named a distinguished alumnus for 2025 in the Ferguson College of Agriculture.

Video production manager Craig Woods put together our story along with a little help from our good friend Casey Shepherd at the radio Oklahoma Network.

- We came to Oklahoma 60 years ago looking for, looking for rain.

I grew up in the fifties in West Texas and the drought where it didn't rain, we've been blowing and going in in southeastern Oklahoma ever since.

- Malone Mitchell Jr.

was born in Sanderson, Texas where his family made their living raising sheep, goats, and cattle.

By the time he was ready for college, he was already familiar with Oklahoma State University through livestock judging and its strong reputation in cattle production.

- I had my choice of of quite a few universities.

I looked at quite a few of 'em, you know, and I chose OSU.

Started in the fall of 57 was the year they changed the name from Oklahoma and AM to Oklahoma State University.

So I called myself the original cowboy.

- Malone joined the Flying Aggies during his time at OSU, which led him to meeting his wife Roberta - And I met her at the airport one October day when it was too nasty to fly or I'd have been flying instead.

Faith put us together.

We got married between our junior and senior year and we've been together ever since.

- Malone went back to Texas, but eventually returned to Oklahoma to start an additional ranch today, Mitchell Ranches is the largest agricultural producer in Oklahoma, south of I 40 and east of I 35.

While the Mitchell Ranch is known for its cattle, the family has carried forward its Scottish tradition of raising sheep and goats livestock that have been part of their heritage for generations.

- We'd had sheep since 1895.

Dad sheep, his brothers had sheep.

I grew up with sheep.

One brother had angora goats.

Now we don't have any sheep.

We've got a big herd, probably the largest herd of angora goats in the United States.

- Malone's a a really, really neat individual, very down to earth.

When you meet him, you, you probably don't have a good appreciation for how much knowledge he has of, of really both cattle production and sheep and goat production.

- Malone's a cornerstone donor for the New Frontiers Agricultural Hall Capital campaign, the N Malone Mitchell Jr.

Soils lab named after Malone, reflects his love of the land and conservation.

And he's established the N Malone and Roberta Mitchell, Jr.

Family Endowed Scholarship supporting OSU'S Sheep and Center.

- He recognizes that from a cattle standpoint, that's a pretty expensive operation to get into for young people and sheep and goats can be a potential way for them on a smaller scale with less economic resources being needed for young people to get involved in production agriculture.

- You're sitting here, it gives them a place, in my opinion, to start in agriculture, a place to start.

You start running sheep and then you go at the cafe.

There won't nobody like you, but that's all you know.

Then you can get a cow and sit with the boys or the one obey, I'll call them.

- Sometimes in these roles as a dean, there's a lot of politics involved and you're trying to read between the lines and read the tea leaves.

But with Malone Mitchell, you just get the straight honest truth and you need that sometimes in these roles.

And it's one thing I I certainly appreciate about him is he's not gonna sugarcoat the situation.

He's gonna tell you what you need to hear and what he believes and that's incredibly valuable.

- Malone attributes his success to his personal philosophy.

- It's always been one of my beliefs.

If you take care of the land, it'll take care of you - Celebrating Malone Mitchell, Jr.

2025 Ferguson College of Agriculture, distinguished Alumnus.

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

A reminder, you can see Sunup anytime on our website, follow us on social media, and of course stream us anytime at youtube.com/sunup tv.

From all of us here at the show, we wish you and your family a very safe and happy holiday season as we leave today some special holiday greetings from OSU Agriculture and we'll see you next time at Sunup.

- We are out at the OSU Dairy Decorating for the season.

On behalf of Christie and myself, we want to thank you for your support and wish you a happy holidays and a happy New year.

Merry Christmas.