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

I'm Lyndall Stout.

Spring calving is right around the corner or already underway for many of you.

And of course, healthy calves are of utmost importance.

So that's where we begin today with OSU Extension Beef Cattle Specialist and veterinarian Dr. Rosslyn Biggs, talking about antibiotic resistant parasites.

(upbeat music) - As we go into spring, it's a good time to think about your processing procedures and treatment plans related to those.

One thing that we're taking a close look here at Oklahoma State is anthelmintic, which is a fancy name for dewormers, and the potential resistance that is developing in our internal parasite populations.

We had some preliminary studies with a group at the College of Veterinary Medicine, very small study, but indicated there's apparent resistance across the state of Oklahoma in our cow herds.

So based on that information, we are working to get a bigger population and take a look at various types of cattle, whether parasite resistance is apparent there as well.

And so we encourage producers across the state, as you think about your deworming protocols into the spring, What this research study involves is cooperating with your local extension educator, and we take two sets of samples.

Fecal samples are then sent to the laboratory and you use the regular product.

There's no cost to the laboratory testing.

They're evaluated at the laboratory and then we come back and take another set of samples about two weeks later after deworming to see have the products you've been using be effective?

So not only for the pharmaceutical stewardship of dewormers, we wanna keep these products on our shelves as long as possible, doing the job that they're supposed to be doing.

But it also can impact your bottom line.

It may give you information in cooperation with your veterinarian to more effectively and efficiently, including cost, be able to treat your herd.

So for those producers that have questions about deworming in their herd, we encourage you to visit with your veterinarian and/or your local extension educator.

(upbeat music) - Welcome to the Mesonet Weather Report.

I'm Wes Lee.

The weather this year has been a little more suitable for wheat production than in the previous few years.

Oklahoma is somewhat unique in that much of the wheat planted is used for dual purposes.

That means it is grazed up to a point, then animals removed, and a grain crop is produced and harvested.

It is important for dual purpose wheat to remove cattle at the right time.

Too early, and it impacts daily weight gains, and too late, it dramatically impacts grain production.

The best time to pull cattle corresponds with what is called the first hollow stem.

This is where the grain head moves up from the plant crown, leaving below it a hollow stem of five eighths of an inch or more.

Research shows that leaving cattle on after first hollow stem can reduce grain yields from one to 5% per day.

Mesonet has a tool called the first hollow stem advisor that can help producers time when to pull cattle.

As with all Mesonet ag tools, there is a simple how to use instruction sheet linked on the main page.

The tool utilizes soil temperatures to run three different models dependent upon wheat variety.

Wheat genetics determine whether the early, middle, or late model is used for your location.

If you don't know which section your planted wheat variety falls in, you can find the ratings for the most commonly planted varieties in a dropdown menu.

The maps are all color coded.

When red start to show up on the map, that means there is at least a 50% probability the plant has reached first hollow stem.

As of midweek, the early varieties map was showing red in the southern tier of counties while the middle and late models had not reached that stage yet.

We recommend using this tool to determine when to physically get out into the field.

to scout for first hollow stem.

Individual fields will vary based upon variety, grazing pressure, planning date, and environmental conditions.

Maps are also available for one and two weeks into the future.

These are not based on weather forecasts, but on long-term historical soil temperature data.

Medium variety map for mid next week shows red areas expanding into the far southern counties.

The map for two weeks shows the red area expanding towards the middle of the state, especially in the east.

You can also use the tool to look at individual Mesonet sites.

Just select the site you want on the right side of the tool and press Get Data.

A chart and table for that site will be produced.

Showing here is the model for early varieties at Weatherford.

The red shows heat units that have been measured and the blue is the expected one and two week values.

The table below shows the daily heat units, the accumulated values, and the percent probability of reaching first hollow stem.

Gary is on the road this week, but we both expect to see you next week on the Mesonet Weather Report.

(upbeat music) - To graze out or not to graze out.

That's a decision many producers are making right now amid warm sunny days and with a very good looking wheat crop.

- For some help weighing the pros and cons, here's Dr. Eric DeVuyst.

- Well, for the past couple weeks here on SUNUP, we've been talking first hollow stem, but not so much the economics of it.

So Eric, when it comes to leaving cattle on past first hollow stem too long, what can happen?

- You're gonna lose money.

That's what, what's what it comes down to.

You know, a year ago, just about a year ago, we had this conversation.

Wheat price was 7.50, value of stocker gains, we were talking about $140 hundredweight for stocker gains.

Now we've taken a couple bucks off the wheat market, we've put another 40, 50 bucks onto that value of gain, and so I ran the numbers again this week.

Still don't do it.

There's two studies we go back to to look at this.

There's a Pfizer et al study, and the Redmond et al study and the Pfizer study, they were bailing or they were, excuse me, grazing stockpiled forage.

And that's not the norm.

As you look out here, this would be more what you would see in after cattle have been out here.

And so the Redmond study looked at a more typically grazed pasture.

And what we found was that you're gonna take off quite a bit of yield and subsequently net return per acre, if you extend the grazing past first hollow stem.

So when we run the economics, just one day past first hollow of stem, you're gonna be back $6.20 an acre, roughly.

When we go to seven days past first hollow stem, that jumps up to about 41 bucks an acre you're gonna be back.

And so that takes into consideration the value of gain on the cattle, the lost wheat yield, the added nitrogen you have to put back on because when you're removing that leaf tissue, that plant's gotta put it back on if it's gonna produce a seed head, and the opportunity cost of those cattle.

'Cause you didn't sell 'em, so you didn't get that money in to repay the operating note to buy chemical or whatever you need for the coming year.

And so when you take that into consideration, you're gonna be back after seven days, 41 bucks.

- So, you know, how low would wheat prices have to be to kind of justify keeping cattle on past first hollow stem.

- Right now, if wheat price was $2 a bushel and value of stocker gains is a buck 90 a pound.

You just about break even if you extended your grazing.

- So you'd have to, it'd have to drop quite a bit.

- Yep, yep.

- You know, Kim Anderson is saying that, you know, wheat prices have bought 'em out, but still that's, you know, not to quite $2.

- We're not gonna make $2.

I'm not a marketing economist, but I'll go out on a limb there and make that prediction that this spring they're not going to two bucks.

- So with wheat prices what they are, like how high would the value of gain need to be to justify it?

- We'd need about $5 a pound to justify extended grazing when wheat's $5.50.

So I don't see that happening anytime soon either.

- Yeah.

So, you know, going back onto the wheat yield, how low would that have to be?

- Wheat yield would have to be under 14 bushels at the current prices to justify even, you know, looking at extended grazing.

So the bottom line is extending grazing in this, in this market, especially as good as the wheat's looking, we can't justify it.

Pull those cattle before first hollow stem.

- Yeah, we can't risk losing all this good moisture that we've gotten in a really strange January and February so far.

Alright, thanks Eric.

Eric DeVuyst, agriculture economist here at Oklahoma State University.

And if you'd like a link to the Mesonet first hollow stem advisor tool, just go to our website, SUNUP.OKState.Edu.

(gentle music) - Good morning Oklahoma and welcome to Cow-Calf Corner.

This week's topic, we address win to assist with calving.

And as we make this decision, we come upon our cows, we're checking them this time of year in calving season.

It can lead to anxious moments as we're trying to make that decision.

So we go through some of the basic things that happen during the calving process.

We start by just addressing the three stages of parturition, and the first one is the dilation of the cervix in the cow.

Now this one is variable in length.

It can happen over the course of days or it can happen over the course of hours.

We may not notice anything going on with that cow.

Or we might notice a mucus string hanging from her vulva.

We may notice a cow that has a little less appetite or separates herself from herd mates, maybe gets off by herself.

But that's phase one.

Stage two is the actual delivery of the calf, and this is the one we'll talk most about with regard to making this decision of whether or not we need to help.

Stage three of parturition is actually the cow just delivering the placental membranes or the after birth as we commonly call it.

Usually happens within a few hours after the birth of the calf.

So stage two is what we're gonna focus on relative to making this decision.

Stage two, that actual delivery of the calf.

A lot of things happen here.

You've got a cervix that's dilated, you have got a water bag that becomes apparent, which most of the texts will say is the time you really wanna start your clock.

- At the beginning of stage two, when you see that water bag, it's gonna become apparent through the water bag.

In a normal presentation, you're gonna be able to see the front feet with dewclaws pointed down and split between those front hooves, and a nose of that calf right behind those through the water bag.

And this is when a cow really goes into a lot of active contractions and starts to work to push that calf out.

Most current data tells us that a healthy cow with a normally presented calf is gonna complete the delivery of the calf process within about 30 minutes.

And a heifer, by that same token, healthy, normal presentation of the calf, everything going well, she's typically gonna complete that delivery within an hour.

So those are good rules of thumb to follow.

What happens whenever we go off the rails, because in a perfect world we'd live with our cows and heifers every minute of every day while they're calving, we would know exactly when stage two started, we'd set our clock, we'd time this, but in reality we come upon heifers and cows and sometimes it's apparent that they're straining, they're laying down, they're trying, and maybe we never see a water bag or any front feet or nose of a calf.

In other cases, maybe we are there at the onset and we're getting to the end of those timelines that are our general rules of thumb.

A couple things to keep in mind.

Not every cow and not every heifer runs that same course of time, but if we reached a point where we can tell that this process has been delayed, if we are pretty certain that things are taking too long and maybe we're not seeing signs of a normal presentation, it's a good idea to get that heifer or cow in, and actually proceed to the point of an examination and see if nature's gonna run its course or if there's something we can do as producers to actually help.

Final thought on this, as we come upon heifers and cows in this process, starting too early and intervening and stressing the cow and causing some kind of disturbance can actually slow down uterine contractions and cause delay in this process, but, by the flip side of that coin, waiting too long can lead to a dead calf or potentially a weak calf, if we don't assist with that delivery soon enough.

So good judgment's the result of experience.

I hope this helps, and thanks for joining us on Cow-calf corner.

(upbeat music) - We're here with Kim Anderson now to look at the crop markets.

So Kim, the USDA just released the 2024 situation outlook estimates, but before we get into that, what did the crop prices do this past week?

- Well, you look at prices, let's go back several months, prices have just been going down.

Look at wheat, go back to October, we were up above $6.

We come into Thanksgiving, that time period, peaked out around 5.80, we're down to around $5.30 right now.

If you go out to the panhandle it's about the same price, slightly lower for current prices, down in central southern Oklahoma about 30 cents less than that.

Forward contracting wheat for harvest delivery, about $5.20.

Remember, the average wheat price over time is about 5.80.

Looking at corn, December corn prices were 4.70, they're down off about 50 cents, down to around 4.10, 4.13 right now.

You can forward contract for '24 delivery of corn for $4.140.

Soybeans, that was our poster child until we got into November, December time period.

Peaked out around 13.25, we've knocked $2 off the bean prices, especially over the last month and a half.

We're down to around $11.25 for beans now.

Forward contracting beans for harvest delivery around 10.90, the average soybean price during harvest is around $10.80.

Cotton.

Cotton prices have been going up, we're up to current cotton prices on the board around 94 cents.

Take off two or three cents for that, you've got around 91 in Oklahoma.

For '24 cotton, 84 cents on the futures market, that gives us about 81, 82 cents contract for coming into the '24 harvest.

- So let's go back to the USDA release, what did that tell us?

- Well, we got our first numbers looking out into the '24, '25 marketing year for wheat, corn, beans, and cotton.

Let's look at all the numbers for wheat, there's a lot of numbers here.

Planted acres, 47.5 million acres compared to 48.8 last year, so down about 2%.

Production though, because we've got good weather right now, we've got moisture, the crop's in relatively good condition.

Around 1.9 billion bushels estimate compared to 1.8 last year.

Ending stocks projected to go up from 658 million bushels to 720, so lower wheat prices.

Corn, now that's a long time out to corn and beans where wheat we're gonna be harvesting in June.

Lest just look at the ending stocks.

For corn, 2.17 billion bushels for this year's crop, they're looking at that go up about 2.5 billion for next year.

That's low corn prices.

Soybeans, 420 million bushels projected for '24, that's up from 315 million this last year.

- When you get into cotton, let's look at all of those numbers.

Acres, 10.7 million acres.

That's up from 10.2 million last year.

Production, 15.2 million bales.

That's up from 12.4 this last year.

And any stocks for cotton, looking at it going up from 2.8 million bales up to 3.5.

You would expect lower cotton prices, but what have we seen over the last week?

We've seen those prices going up.

- Yeah, so how is the estimates going to impact farmers' decisions in the next few weeks?

- Well, farmers are gonna look at the pre-release estimates, which we've been talking about.

Compare them to USDA estimates that's was released yesterday.

The whole market's gonna look at that, and that'll give us a starting point for prices going out.

There's a lot that's gonna happen between now and the '24 harvest.

- Alright, thanks Kim.

We look forward to catching back up with you next week.

Kim Anderson, Crop Marketing Specialist here at Oklahoma State University.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] And just a quick reminder to let you know that the upcoming 2024 OSU Extension Grape Management course is now open for registration.

The course is a great opportunity for growers of all levels of experience to come learn about pruning, the economics of grape growing, soil and water quality and disease management.

The first course will be on March 7th at the Cimarron Valley Research Station in Perkins, and the deadline to register is February 23rd.

For more information about this event, just go to sunup.okstate.edu.

(upbeat music) - There are several things that pond owners may not be thinking about all the time that they need to be aware of, that they need to be monitoring in order to avoid some serious problems that develop and unfold slowly but can be impractical to fix once they are full-blown.

Begin by always keeping in mind that your pond is surrounded by a watershed area, a drainage area, and everything that is above your pond is at risk of harming your pond perhaps in some way.

The number one contaminant we have of ponds and other water bodies in Oklahoma is silt and clay from actively eroding areas.

The clay makes a terrible mess of the pond and reduces the carrying capacity for the fish, and the silt is a little bit more invisible, but it's just as harmful in that it fills in the pond basin, reducing your storage volume and perhaps leading to the need for some expensive clean out procedures during future drought periods.

So anything you can do to head off erosion in the watershed above you is going to be very cost effective.

The second item to be aware of is that too much in the way of livestock access can degrade the pond and shorten its lifetime.

Be on the lookout for shallowing edges from cattle getting in and out or cattle trails along the dam.

Either of these items can lead to costly potential rebuilding situations, and it may also be indicative of too much livestock waste being deposited in a pond, leading to low water quality problems for the cattle themselves.

If you suspect this, get in touch with us and see if we can't work with you to come up with some possible ways to reduce livestock access while maintaining that water source for your cattle.

Item three that people let creep up on them is plant over abundance.

If your pond is getting weedy, it's a year-to-year increase.

If you're seeing this trend, snap some pictures of the overall situation.

Get some closeups of the problem plant themselves and work with your county office to see if there isn't an herbicide solution that might work in the short term and some longer term management steps that may help to turn things back in the right direction.

Item four would be poor fishing.

Are you beginning to see overabundant small fish of any type or variety?

If so, grab a few pictures of your catch and visit with us or the Wildlife Department to see if we can't come up with some ideas for you on how to get your pond back into balance.

Early action is better than late.

We can't always turn the situation around, but if we get after it, sometimes just through heavy selective fishing, we can begin to restore the balance situation in the pond.

If any of these four points or anything else rings a bell in your mind as to things you might want to be doing with your pond, please get in touch with us through your county extension office.

- Finally, today we are arming you with information with a look at some OSU Extension resources to help you make farming decisions.

Here's our area agronomist, Josh Bushong.

- This time of year, especially crops like wheat, we're out looking at our fields, doing a lot of assessing.

We also have a lot of tools we can use that are in our toolbox.

A lot of digital tools that we're using.

- Name one would be Mesonet, mesonet.org.

Excellent source of tools for our crop producers out there.

We have some really keen ones this time of year.

Ideally, the First Hollow Stem app where you can go on there and get kind of a sense on how far along the crop should be this time of year according to what kind of heat units we've absorbed so far.

You can put in your planning date, some variety information, what kind of maturity your wheat is.

It'll give you idea what kind of likelihood you are at first hollow stem.

Obviously, nothing beats going out and checking your own fields for your own conditions, but that is a tool you can use on your phone, on your computer at home, wherever, in your office.

Another one that we've looked at in the past is Canopeo, which is a phone app available to any smartphone.

You got Androids and Apples able to download that app.

So that Canopeo app is just taking a picture with your smartphone, and then it'll convert it and it'll tell you what percent green ground cover you have on your farm.

So it's not going to tell you how much vegetation you have or how much biomass.

It's just showing you how much of the ground is actually covered by green material.

And so we're able to use that data, some previous researchers, previous small grain specialists at OSU, and we made some fact sheets showing how much green ground cover at certain stages.

So when we're going into dormancy, when we're coming out and pulling stalkers off, how much green ground cover is going to be beneficial or ideal to still raise a grain crop.

And so that's a tool, a free tool.

You can use some other tools out there, especially for nitrogen management.

We still have GreenSeeker technology through Trimble.

You can go out there with the N-Rich strip.

You can either use it just as a yes, no, if you have just a bag of urea in a can or a cup, a Eskimo Joe's Cup or whatever, make you a spot that's high in nitrogen.

You can visually see if there's a difference.

If there is no difference, you don't need to top dress a field.

But as far as determining maybe a more economical top dress rate for your nitrogen, we do have that tool at all of our OSU extension offices have it available to 'em.

We can go out there, we can sense with that sensor the spot that's not limited in nitrogen and the rest of the field.

And we will use your planning dates and the growing the green days calculator, determine what kind of yield potential we have without more nitrogen, what kind of yield potential we have in that area that's not limited in nitrogen and come out with the economical top dress rate.

And so there's a lot of tools we can use this time of year in our wheat.

Most of them are all free through Extension.

Just go by your local county Extension office.

We'll be able to help you any way we can.

And there's also obviously a lot of resources online through our fact sheets to find out more in detail.

So to find all those resources, either the apps or the the fact sheets or any of those other methods, we'll have all those resources on the Sunup website at your convenience.

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

A reminder, you can see us anytime at 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.

(upbeat country music) (upbeat country music continues) (gentle guitar music)