(calm music) (upbeat music) - Hello everyone and welcome to SUNUP, I'm LYNDALL STOUT.

Hard to believe we're almost at mid December.

Oklahoma's wheat crop is coming along and that's where we begin today with an update from Dr. AMANDA SILVA, our OSU Extension Small Grain Specialist.

- Yeah so September was very dry, it delayed a little bit our planting for the dual-purpose trial.

So we planted this trial here, which is what we call the forage trials end of September and we can see that right now we have a good amount of forage.

We collected some samples yesterday, can definitely see differences among varieties.

And so I'm looking forward to see that data and share it with producers.

As far as our grain only wheat, we planted it on time, we got some heavy rains in October, which kinda delayed some locations but overall I think we planted in time.

And since those rains in October we haven't seen anything.

So it's been really dry and the wheat could definitely use some water.

As far as grazing initiation I'm hearing that producers, some of the producers have already let their cattle out.

Some are thinking on next week but, and also hearing that we have a good, fairly good amount of forage that was produced during the fall.

Usually grazing, it starts 45 to 60 days after planting.

Plants about six to eight inches of top growth.

And, but very important is to check that secondary root development to make sure that the plants are well anchored in, and grazing, it's not going to impact the crop.

Our wheat here in Oklahoma, it doesn't need those many weeks of very cold temperature to vernalize.

So we have some varieties here that may need two weeks and some that may need six, but I will say that here in Oklahoma, we don't get those very strong vernalization periods.

So it's okay if we are in a warm winter, we just need about, would say two, three weeks of temperatures below 50 Fahrenheit for the wheat to go through that dormancy period.

I've been hearing some concerns about yellow wheat and in some situations, some folks were worried about wheat streak mosaic, got sent samples to the lab, to the diagnostic lab here and samples got back negative.

But if, I just wanted to say that if people were concerned, they just should sent samples here to the lab and they will give them the report.

Also some situations of yellow wheat could be in those low lying areas of the field where the wheat was just sitting in those three, four inches of rain that we got in October, those early planted wheat.

That could have damaged the roots possibly also predisposed the development of some fungus in the roots.

So we had some samples that had root rots fungus in the wheat.

And if people were in doubt, just sent samples to the lab.

Some situations could be possibly nitrogen deficiency in those areas in, and that could be due to losses through denitrification or leaching in those heavy rains spots.

This fall has been very quiet on diseases.

I haven't seen many diseases overall.

Like I really, well yesterday I spotted some leaf frost here in the field, but really spotted it's, I haven't heard of many issues with diseases in general, but we'll see as we get out of the winter and in the spring how things look.

Right now that's all I'm thinking about and just hoping for that rain.

Trying to get some late planted wheat here establish or planted and it's gonna be again, a late season dusted in, so this will be interesting too.

So I'm really hoping to get some rain soon.

(upbeat music) - Dr. DERREL PEEL, our Livestock Marketing Specialist joins us.

Now, Darryl, I understand that fed cattle prices have increased in the last month.

Let's talk about some of the reasons why we're seeing that jump.

- It took all year to get to this point.

We waited anticipating that this market would finally get to the point where it cleared out.

So, fed cattle prices or fed cattle markets have been struggling under capacity constraints.

We just couldn't process cattle fast enough to sort of get ahead of the game.

And it finally broke out about five or six weeks ago going into November.

And so we've seen about a 14 percent increase in fed cattle prices and in just a little over a month's time.

And so, it took a long time to get here, but we've made it now.

- We're also seeing feeder cattle prices increasing as well.

Is that related to the fed cattle trends?

- Well, it's partly that now, you know, the feeder cattle markets, we're already building some optimism.

In fact, most of the market, if you will, across all segments was ready to go.

The fed cattle market was the bottleneck.

And so, feeder cattle prices had already kind of started up, although in the fall of the year we have seasonal lows.

So for the lightweight stocker type calves in Oklahoma, the first week of October was actually the low, and they started going up.

And then of course, once the fed cattle market took off in November, they've gone even higher yet.

So we've gone up every week since the first week in October for those feeder cattle prices.

- Hard to believe we're already winding down 2021, but in your opinion are we ending on a strong note?

- We are really are, you know, again, the pieces have been getting there, and we finally kind of got the stars lined up with all of the pieces in place with this fed cattle market being the last one.

And so, we're ending the year on a very strong note, you know, overall the supply side is tightening up.

We know cattle numbers are getting tighter.

Beef production is beginning to fall.

And so, that side is supporting the market.

And of course, on the other side, we've had good, strong demand.

Wholesale and retail prices are holding strong.

Exports are gonna set a record in 2021.

So we're just really ending the year on a very strong note to go into the coming year.

- So as we wind down 2021, how is 2022 shaping up in your mind?

- We're going to go into 2022 in good shape.

Again, we've got, expectations for decreased beef production, demand has been very strong, supplies are tightening.

So, you know, our forecast, are for higher average.

Fed cattle or cattle prices in general, across the board, as we go into 2022, we'll have the usual kind of seasonal things.

And, obviously there will be dynamics in the industry.

There's always dynamics but really we're in very good shape going into 2022.

- Okay.

Great.

Dr. Darrell PL, thanks a lot.

We'll see you next time.

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

Last week I visited with you about the year to date rainfall situation.

So this week, let's focus on the state's temperature situation and how unseasonably warm it has been lightly.

Here are average temperatures by month, over the past year.

We see a cooler than average first half of the year with more blue arrows than red.

This was highlighted by the exceptionally cold month of February, where temperatures averaged about 10 degrees below normal.

August came in exactly matching the long-term average at 80.8.

Since then, we have seen warmer than normal temperatures.

This line chart, focuses on this period of time, looking at the daily high temperatures' departure from normal.

You can say that the vast majority of days were spent above the average indicated by the zero line.

Of course, we have encountered cool fronts that moved through the state, but they were mostly weak and very short lived.

Another way to illustrate this, is by looking at soil temperatures.

This three-day average temperature at four inches is running mainly in the fifties or about five degrees from where we were at, a year ago.

What does next week's forecast look like?

It strongly indicates the light season heat wave will continue with much higher than normal temperatures.

Now here's Gary, with some pretty dismal rain news.

- Thanks Wes, and good morning everyone.

Well, once again, we find ourselves in a pretty bad situation with drought during that second year of a double-dip La Nina, very much like the cool season of 2017, 2018, which saw that drought start in the fall, extend all the way into the spring of 2018.

We're not quite as bad as that yet, but we're well on our way.

Not saying it's gonna happen, but it's something we need to watch.

Let's get straight to that new drought monitor map.

Well, as you can see, we have a lot more color on the map this week, those tans, and browns, and reds.

So nearly all of the state, now has at least some drought, at least moderate drought to severe drought.

And we still have a little bit of area over in east central, Northeastern, Oklahoma, a little bit of north central Oklahoma with just abnormally dry conditions, but without a future rainfall.

Even in those areas, drought will start to spread and cover those parts of the state as well.

We have several maps from Oklahoma Mesonet, which show the damage that's going on with the dry weather.

The consecutive days with less than 10th of an inch rainfall map.

From the Mesonet, we do see a much of the Western half of the state from 30 to almost 60 days without a 10th of an inch of rain in a single day.

So very bad conditions.

And (indistinct) the threshold to a quarter of an inch, it gets even worse.

and look out there in the Western Panhandle, (indistinct) 102 days, straight days without at least a quarter inch of rain in a single day.

So definitely damage being done to the soils and the crops of the state of Oklahoma in these areas.

The 30 day rainfall map speaks for itself.

- Very little rainfall across the state, some decent amounts over across to east central, and Northeastern Oklahoma, a little bit in the Southeast, but for the Western half to two-thirds of the state, really nothing much to speak of, a little bit of a decent rain over in parts of Eastern Oklahoma, but for the Western half, no rainfall at all.

And that paints a pretty depressing percent a normal rainfall map for that 30-day period, lots of zeros all across the state, especially across that Western half of the state.

And really nobody's been above normal even in the last 30 days.

Even those parts of east central Oklahoma that had the decent rains, still just a little bit below normal to really a lot below normal.

So we really need a pattern change to come in here.

We need a big low pressure system to come in from the west and just sat there and crank out some rain.

No, see it quite yet.

Maybe in a couple of weeks, let's hope that comes sooner rather than later.

That's it for this time on the mez net weather report.

- Good morning, Oklahoma.

Welcome to Cow calf corner.

And thanks for joining us.

This week's topic is preparing our cows for winter, and the spring calving season.

In the past couple months we've talked about some information we collect on cows at weaning that's useful to us, and helps us make better decisions as we think longterm.

One of those things that we encourage producers to look at at waning is the body condition on the cows.

I know we previously talked about body condition scoring that's covered in chapter 20, of our newest addition to the beef cattle manual.

And as we relate back to that topic, we always say at calving, we would like for our mature cow herd to be about a body condition score five and a half, and our first calf happens to be calving at about a body condition score six.

Now why that's important, is because we know that cows during lactation and raising a calf are going to melt down and get thinner.

And we know that those body energy reserves that they're going to need to breed back in a timely fashion and getting bred 80 to 85 days postpartum so that they continue to calve and wean off a calf every 12 months is, is really important to our bottom line, in cow calf operation.

So as we think about preparation, now's really the most efficient time of the year, if we've got cows that need to recapture some body flesh or put some more on, if they're still in the middle third or middle trimester of pregnancy is our most efficient time to do a little supplemental feeding, and try to get those cows to those target body condition scores by the time they calve next spring.

We're probably going to face more cold weather and potentially some wet weather, we know that those energy needs go way up once they actually do calve And so one of the things we can do to accomplish this is actually separate the cows, by the thin ones that need a little extra groceries, versus those cows that are an optimum body condition.

And it takes a little extra labor, a little extra management, but it is more cost-effective to do it that way, than feeding the whole herd and putting extra flesh on those cows that don't necessarily need it.

If we're curious about looking a little closer, at what the nutritional requirements are on those cows in order to try to put on a little bit of weight, relative to, or put on a little body condition relative to what they're weighing and the stage of production to they're in right now, I encourage producers to take a look at the calculator program, on our beef extension website.

That's it for this week.

Appreciate you joining us on sunup TV.

(upbeat music) - Before we look at the crop news, let's review the prices.

This week we traded at $7 and 80 cents.

That's 33 cents under the March contract.

You could forward contract wait for the 2020 to harvest, for $7 and 79 cents that's 28 cents below that July 22 contract.

Corn could be sold for $5 and 75 cents.

That's 13 cents under the March contract, or you can forward contract corn for 22 delivery, at $5 and 70 cents and that's 24 cents under that December 22 corn contract.

soybeans we're right at $12 59 cents below the March contract and 22 soybeans for the 19 for the 2020 to harvest was $11 and 65 cents, that's 75 cents under that December 22 contract.

Now, normally this time you hear that, forward contract basis for soybeans is around 90 to 96 to a dollar, So that 75 cent basis is a relatively good basis.

Cotton was trading at about $108.

That's $3 under the ice futures contract for cotton.

And looking out on that December 22 cotton contract, it was $89.

So about 86 for cash contract price.

- The news in the wheat market's probably concentrated on the supply and demand issue.

Demand this year has been above expectations and supply is relatively tight.

You look at the world of wheat stocks, about 10.1 billion bushels compared to 10.8, 10.9 in the last couple of years.

World stocks are tight.

US wheat stocks are really tight, both for all wheat and hard red winter wheat.

You have to go back to 2012, 2013 to see wheat stocks as low and that's when we had 7 and $8 wheat prices like we have now.

I think we need to look at that long range weather forecast from the National Weather Service.

The one month forecast is for high probability of above average temperature and a high probability of below average moisture.

But when you get out to that three month, that 90 day long range forecast, you're looking at the temperature in the Eastern half of Oklahoma about average, on the Western half slightly above average.

Which means for, if you're looking at December, January and February to average out to near average temperatures, you're gonna have to have average or below average temperatures in February.

And I think that's good news because they're looking at the moisture out in February to be average to slightly below average.

So it looks like February may be a colder month and may be a wetter month in December and January.

And this has an impact because of high nitrogen costs.

When we get out that February time period, it's February, March and you're looking at top dressing, you're gonna look at how dry those wheat fields are.

And if they're dry, you're probably gonna put down less nitrogen if you have more shear.

And at that time you'll also wanna look at those long range forecast.

You wanna look at world wheat prices, they're relatively good.

I watched the CIF into Egypt.

That's a cargo insurance and freight into the Egypt port.

This week they bought wheat for $9.44 cents a bushel as compared to 9.09 about three weeks ago, a gain of 35 cents.

Transportation from the Black Sea ports to Egypt was 68 cents.

Three weeks ago that was 95 cents.

And if you go back, last year to a past years is about 42 cents.

So we've seen transportations go up to 95 back down to 68 and that's good.

But what that means is is that the wheat price Egypt, the price Egypt paid for their wheat was 62 cents above three weeks ago.

And I think that's positive for our prices.

Australia, the rains stopped there.

They're getting that wheat harvested and that's good news.

You look at the corn and bean markets, Mexico has been big buyers of corn.

They bought 72.6 million bushels.

Interestingly, 42.5 of it to be delivered in 21, 22 marketing year.

But 30.1 million bushels of that corn is in the 22, 23 marketing year.

And that's something to watch on corn man there.

You've got to Brazil, Australia and Ukraine, still, Brazil and Argentina planting corn.

Ukraine finishing up their corn crop, they export 52% of the world's corn.

So we need to watch those.

In the long run, what I'm reading in the news is that there may be a shift from corn to lentils and soybeans.

And if that's the case, that's gonna support corn prices as we get out into that 22 market.

Now what's the impact that you have on the farmers or what should you be watching on this?

I think it's that high cost of nitrogen and nitrogen use and putting a tight pencil to it.

I think the current wheat supply and demand situation is gonna support prices at $7 or better, put nitrogen down if you have more shear and if you can get it to pay.

Also when you're making that corn, soybean decision, watch what's happening in the rest of the world about whether they're planting corn, the lentil or soybeans.

(light-hearted guitar music) - Now back to cattle and some guidance on managing your herd this winter.

Here's Dr. Dave Lalman.

- It's interesting one of the most popular projects I have done in my career here at Oklahoma state, is a study comparing feeding hay efficiency, using different styles of hay feeders.

And a lot of the Senate viewers would be familiar with that work, but it continues to be a very popular subject.

We actually have a new publication on that topic and you can access that at sunup.okstate.edu.

But the quick story on that is that, you know, the most popular feeder in a brief survey we did continues to be the lightweight, kind of a minimal structure, hay feeders that do not have a solid bottom or any kind of a basket structure.

Those feeders are convenient to move, they're low cost but they do waste a considerable amount of hay in our research and two other studies that have been published now.

- Waste in those kinds of feeders generally runs in the 19 to 21% of the original bale weight.

And that's if the cows are provided ad-lib hay and they pull that hay out and drop it on the ground, and they wind up standing on it.

And once they've stand on it, laid down on it, maybe urinated on it and so on, they don't consume it unless they just have to.

Simple improvement is to put a solid ring around the bottom of that feeder.

And in the work that we did here at Oklahoma State, it looked like that reduced the amount of hay waste down to around 8% of the original bale weight.

And then finally, there are quite a few feeders now on the market that have some type of a basket mechanism in the middle of the feeder.

And that serves to hold that bale towards the center until the cattle have consumed enough hay, of the hay that falls below or collapses below the basket mechanism.

And that simply keeps hay away from the exterior of the feeder.

And that minimizes hay waste.

The combination of the solid sheet or ring around the bottom, the first 18 inches or so, and the basket together in the work that we've done results in somewhere in the neighborhood of five to 6% waste in terms of the original bale weight.

They're not as convenient.

Those fancier feeders are gonna be heavier, harder to move.

You may have to use a front end loader to load a bale into the feeder, and certainly they're gonna cost more.

So you just have to visit with your dealer and consider those different aspects before you purchase a feeder.

(gentle music) - Finally today, the $800,000 grant from the EPA to OSU researchers, looking at a new technology aiming to decrease the cost of cattle production while improving land and natural resource management.

- So the technology that we're talking about today is virtual fencing.

And that's pretty new concept in cattle production.

It's not a new concept in general.

A lot of people are very familiar with pet containment systems that have been developed.

- But where systems for your dog use buried lines, these colors communicate wirelessly to a base station.

Producers use a computer or cell phone to designate where cattle can or cannot graze.

- Great thing about the virtual fence collars for cattle is that they're totally based on GPS.

So there's nothing in the pasture.

There's no wires buried in the ground, there's nothing you have to put in the physical infrastructure of the pasture.

It all works off of GPS.

- It's enabled us to pull out miles of electric fence.

- A startup company called Vence, provided the system, and it promises to do more than just reduce fencing costs.

Producers can easily manage exactly where cattle graze improving the quality of their grazing lands.

The systems can also address animal welfare.

- If an animal doesn't move for a period of time like we expect that it should normally, we can get an alert from the system and go check that animal.

We know exactly where it is.

And so we can quickly go check on that animal and make sure everything's okay.

- And that was very useful.

This spring we had them on when the cows were calving, which made tracking the cows at calving much easier.

We had them in a native pasture with a lot of brush.

So it was a real time-saver.

You could actually go to that individual cow that had separated herself from the herd, check on her status if she was in difficulty, if she'd had the calf and go on about your business.

- Virtual fencing may also help with securing cattle from theft or even keeping them away from noxious weeds.

Another aspect, the research is looking at improving watersheds.

- One of the things we're interested in from the water center perspective is the benefits of virtual fencing to water quality.

A major barrier of adoption of improved grazing management practices has been the implementation of permanent fencing.

And so we felt like virtual fencing will help overcome that.

And it can be utilized for implementing repair and protection, as well as rotational grazing systems and other grazing systems that can improve water quality.

- I think it could be a way that we can improve longterm sustainability of grazing lands in Oklahoma and across the world.

And we're really excited to be on the forefront of investigating this new technology.

(gentle music) - That'll do it for us this week.

A reminder, you can see us any time on our websites, sunup.okstate.edu, and also follow us on YouTube and social media.

I'm Lyndall Stout.

Have a great week everyone.

And remember, Oklahoma agriculture starts at Sunup.

(gentle music)