- Hello everyone and welcome to SUNUP.

I'm Lyndall Stout.

It's time to talk about wheat again and this time we're looking at first hollow stem with Dr. Amanda Silva, our Extension Small Grain Specialist.

Amanda, it's that time of year.

- Yes, it is that time of the year and we are out here measuring, our lab is measuring first hollow stem on a twice a week basis.

And even though the forage situation this year is really not good, we are continuing to learn and provide that information to producers.

- Are you starting to see some signs of first hollow stem appearing in some parts of the state, especially to the south?

- It does, it does vary on, on where we are in the state.

And in some reportings that I've been hearing, we are not quite there yet.

Here in Stillwater Chichester, we are measuring on a twice per week basis and the varieties are still not there.

However, with this weather, with the moisture we got in somewhere, areas in the state, warm temperatures the wheat's going to develop and pick it up really fast.

- And refresh our memory, that first hollow stem stage is really a crucial stage of plant development, we've talked about at the last couple of weeks on SUNUP with our Agri-economics folks but really a crucial stage of the plant when you need to take the cattle off wheat if you want to harvest the grain.

Correct?

- Correct.

Yes.

And so just to clarify first hollow stem is the stage that indicates the onset of that stem elongation.

So that is when that wheat head is developing and moving up in the stem and it happens right before the joint in the stage.

It is a crucial time for producers to remove cattle from the field because any day that you graze after that first hollow stem research has shown that you can have a reduction yield and that reduction will vary depending on the weather conditions, will vary depending on the variety in the grazing intensity, but it can have an impact in one to 5% in yield loss for every day that wheat is grazed pest first hollow steam.

- So pretty significant As producers are scouting in their fields, what do they really need to look at when they look inside the, the stock of the plant?

- So just check some plants in the field, dig up some plants because will be easier to look for that first hollow stem, so it split up the stems.

So plants will be at the hollow stem when there is a 1.5 centimeter or the diameter of a dime of a hollow stem between the developing head in the crown.

- There's also a tool on the Messonet that folks can check out and kind of see how it's progressing north.

- Yeah, so they can look at, in the Mesonet, we have updated with varieties and the categories of the varieties so early and medium and late.

And they can use that as a tool also in addition to that, they can use the information that we collected from previous years and the information that we are collecting these years, for varieties that should be first to be monitored in their fields for first hollow stem.

- As we talked about numerous times over the last few months really, probably the last year, the drought is very very significant and detrimental to the crop.

You've been hearing from producers who normally would have a lot of cattle out on wheat this time of year, not the case.

Right?

- It's not the case.

Some producers didn't buy cattle for their first time in their lives.

So after 30 years of this dual purpose system, some producers are grazing now at a much lower stocking rate and a lot of them did not have any pasture in the for that late fall grazing.

So it's been, it's this drought has taken a toll on our producers especially in our dual purpose producers, but really hoping that we get more moisture in our state and that will drive up our yield potential.

- Let's hope for sure.

We know cattle and wheat go hand in hand in Oklahoma for sure.

Well, Amanda, thank you very much for the update and we will see you again soon.

- Welcome to the Mesonet Weather Report.

I'm Wes Lee.

Temperature is one of the driving forces for all living things.

In general, the warmer the temperature the faster the organism develops.

In wheat monitoring temperatures above a minimum threshold of 40 degrees helps us estimate what stage of development the plant is in.

- This year it has been warmer than normal on average.

Here you can see the daily average temperature's for the South Central region of Oklahoma.

The dark line at zero would be the long term average temperature and the red line shows how far above or below normal it has been lately.

During this period, the temperature was above normal two out of every three days.

First hollow stem is the gross stage where cattle are removed from dual purpose wheat.

Cattle left to graze after this stage can severally impact grain yield.

Reds on this map shows where first hollow stem might be occurring in the South on variety's that routinely reach this stage early.

On middle maturing varieties, there is limited red area's on the map but increasing daily.

A note of caution, these models assume the wheat is actively growing and planted on a normal date.

This year delayed planning and moisture limited growth may have these maps over estimating the real situation.

Field scouting is the only way to know for sure.

Now here's Gary with some improvements to the drought map.

- Thanks Wesson, Good Morning everyone.

Well we finally had some great movement on the drought monitor map reflecting all those wonderful rains over the last couple of weeks.

Let's get right to that new map and take a look.

Well as you can see, really South East of I-44 as I mentioned last week, we had great changes coming this week and for sure that's showing up on the map.

Now we have a good portion of the far South East Oklahoma without any color at all, so no drought or abnormally dry conditions.

And then we quickly go to moderate to mostly severe drought, little bit of an extreme drought but certainly better than what we had a couple of weeks ago.

And then of course as we get up into North Western Oklahoma, we're dealing with mostly extreme to exceptional drought.

So those are the area's that continue to miss out on the rainfall.

If we look at those changes on the US Drought Monitor Class change for one week, so from last week to this week we had a one class improvement, basically across the South Eastern half of the state, a little bit up into North Western Oklahoma.

Of course these are wonderful changes reflecting that rainfall but we were the center point in the country of big changes at least.

So, good news for Oklahoma.

Those changes were highlighted by the 30 day Mesonet rainfall map, again we can see, highlighted South East of I-44 basically.

The big range especially up into North Eastern and South Eastern Oklahoma where four to six to seven, to even as much as ten inches fell.

We do get a little bit lower down on the scale as we go into North Western Oklahoma, but almost everybody had at least appreciable rainfall over the last 30 days.

So you get out in the Panhandle where they had less than a quarter inch, their still hurting pretty badly out in that region of the state.

The percent of normal rainfall map for the last 30 days shows it better than the departure from normal, so if we look at this map we see those wonderful blues indicating 150,200% of normal across, basically again the South Eastern half of the state but also leading up into parts of North Central Oklahoma.

Again though, that Panhandle region in far North West still showing big deficits especially out across the Western Panhandle.

Boise City had 17% of normal rainfall over the last 30 days.

So extremely dry out in that region.

So a great start as we go into the early part of Spring as we get into March.

Hopefully we can have a little bit more here in February and stamp out a little bit more drought, (upbeat music) Hopefully in North Western Oklahoma.

That's it for this time, we'll see you next time on Mesonet Weather Report.

- The recent USDA cattle inventory report showed that beef cow herd is the smallest it's been in many years.

Now Derrell, you predicted this, so is cow liquidation, do you think it's over?

- Well you know we saw that, obviously we've had a lot of contraction the last two years because of the drought and that's really gonna be the determining factor of whether the liquidation is over.

At the moment we're still in drought.

Now we're getting a little bit of moisture right now and the meteorologist suggest that maybe conditions are gonna change as we move through the year.

But it's really gonna be weather that determines, whether or not we're done liquidating.

The cow herd is actually a little bit smaller than it was in the most recent low in 2014, so that makes it currently the smallest US beef cow herd since 1962.

- So if the weather does shake up and there's some good things to happen from there, does the cattle industry need to rebuild the cow herd at all?

- Yeah, I think we're smaller than we need to be, we were forced into this, we didn't plan to get this small.

If you look at the overall market and the size of the industry we don't need to be this small.

So there will be an incentive to rebuild when we can and you know, where we started this liquidation in 2019 from those peaks, we didn't need to be much if any smaller at that point in time.

We're now quite a bit smaller than that.

- So if drought continues to improve, like how much can cow herds expand in 2023?

- You know I think our ability to expand is very, very limited, in fact I don't think it's possible for the beef cow herd to expand this year.

At most I think we might be able to hold it steady, more likely I think is a little bit of liquidation yet to come in 2023.

And that's just due to the fact that we don't have a a lot of replacement heifers to work with.

- [Daryl] We've liquidated so many heifers as well as cows the last couple of years.

It's gonna take some time to sort of rebuild that pool of replacement females that we have available.

2023 might be the consolidation year, if you will, to sorta get ourselves ready for expansion but that probably takes place at least going into 2024.

- So Spring's almost here.

So what, you know, going forward, what are some things that producers need to do to have a successful 2023?

- Well, obviously if we're still in the drought, producers that are caught up in the drought are still very much on the defensive right now.

So they're trying to figure out, first of all, how to get through the Winter.

So feed supplies.

Then beyond that, we're gonna be watching these weather conditions to see what Spring comes, you know, brings for us in terms of improved forage conditions.

You know, producers recognize what's happening with these animal numbers and the fact that we're gonna continue to see higher prices.

There will be some opportunities in the market but first we gotta get through the drought then we gotta recover from the drought.

So I think producers really put a lot of emphasis right now on resource management, planning ahead to, you know, to be in position, but not, probably not to rush things too fast and give their pastures and their, you know, their forage resources time to recover and be set to expand.

Maybe not so much this year but going forward into next year.

- All righty, thanks Daryl.

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

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

Well, it's the middle of February.

We've actually had a little bit of moisture in the state of Oklahoma and some wheat and wheat pasture and cool season grass that look pretty iffy.

A few weeks or a few months ago is actually starting to come on.

We still look at the drought monitor and we see virtually all the state in various degrees of drought.

But we reach this point and we talk about our winter management checklist of things to consider if we're in the cow calf business.

First thing we address on this are our replacement heifers that we plan to be breeding on later this Spring, on target to reach the weight that they need to be.

Now, general rules of thumbs on replacement heifers, by 14 to 15 months of age, they need to be at roughly two thirds of their mature weight.

We know that over 90% of heifers that accomplish that are gonna be fertile and ready to conceive so that they're on schedule to calf at two years of age.

At this point in the year, typically, if we've got our normal wheat pasture in Oklahoma, it's relatively easy to get those heifers to that target weight.

But, if we've been in a situation with limited hay and feed resources and we've not had any winter cool season grass to graze, we might want to take inventory of those heifers.

If we've got some wheat pasture coming on or just need to adjust our feeding program, we've still got time to get those heifers to where they need to be so that they're on schedule to breed at two years of age.

Second thing to consider right now is let's assess the body condition score on our cow herd or those replacement heifers that are getting ready to calf.

We want those heifers to be at about a six.

We want those cows to be more at about a five and a half.

If we're within a half a body condition score of that going in, we know we're in pretty good shape.

It's probably as important as it's ever been this year with a lot of non-traditional hays that have been fed and some different feeding programs that we consider supplemental feed, mineral supplementation, the right kind of protein supplementation maybe even even adding in an IONA four to those cows diets if we need to put a little weight and body condition score going into calving season on those so that we get prompt breed back and keep them on schedule to be calving once a year.

Third thing to consider, along the same lines is just deworming.

Sometimes deworming can be the least expensive feed that we ever feed, so we might need to check records, see how long ago we did that.

It may be cost effective right now to run those cows through the chute and deworm.

If we're getting ready to go into our calving season, we wanna make sure we are prepared for cold weather calving.

We have been lulled to sleep by a very mild winter to this point in Oklahoma.

Very little cold weather, very little wet weather.

Typically, we gotta be prepared for that whenever we're calving them out.

We still got several weeks where that could happen.

So, remain prepared if you're gonna be having some calves in cold weather.

And final topic, this is the time of year in Oklahoma, we typically start making plans to be pulling off of wheat pasture by first hollow of stem.

Maybe by the early part of first part of March.

This year, we may be just getting ready to turn in on wheat pasture.

I remind you to take preventative measures to prevent bloat on wheat pasture.

Maybe it's feeding poxalyne, maybe it's adding an IONA four, menincine.

My colleague Dr. Paul Beck had an excellent article on that a week ago in our Cow Calf Corner, you can find that in the February 6th edition of Cow Calf Corner.

So, that's our checklist and things to keep in mind right now as far as best management practices.

- Look forward to joining you again next week and we'll talk about freeze branding.

Thanks for joining us this week.

On Cow Calf Corner.

- They say the news never stops, but sometimes it slows down.

And Kim, that's kind of what's happening in the crop markets right now, huh?

- Yeah, there just wasn't much in the market this week.

But you look at Mexico they talked about that genetically modified corn.

They can import it for livestock feed but it cannot be imported to go into the food.

China still the Covid deal where they've released everything, they say that half of the increase in oil exports this next year will be to China.

So China's gonna have an impact on our diesel price for our our Producers.

Of course, you've got some insignificant news down Brazil.

The soybean harvest, it's going as expected.

Now, a little side or a tidbit is that India's population is now greater than China's population.

So India is now the most populated country in the world both over, well over 1.4 billion people.

- So what happened to crop prices?

- Well, not much.

We did have a little rally in wheat prices.

You know, you got up $0.10 or $0.12 they broke out that $8.50 to range.

It got up to around $8.70, $8.75, something like that.

You look at the harvest prices, increases there.

Got up to $8.30 cents, backed off a little bit as we got into the end of the week.

And if you go to say the panhandle area $0.05 to $0.10 more if you go to Southern Oklahoma, $0.40 less.

And if you'll look, there's $0.40 spread between the current price and the harvest price.

- And so what about corn and beans?

- Really nothing in corn and beans, I mean just straight sideways, since they've been all month.

The corn is up around that $5.75 upper limit there.

And we're talking about harvest prices.

'23 Harvest beans went up, hit that $13 resistance that top that we've seen over the last couple months and backed off around $0.10 or $0.15.

cotton, $0.80 to $0.83.

It's just not much happening in the market.

- So did you expect that news or lack thereof to really take place?

- This is the time of year.

You don't have much news going on.

If you look at what's gonna happen next week the USDA is gonna have their annual outlook for 'them.

Now this is where they don't have the survey prediction on prices and such.

It's their models.

It's the first prediction of the 2023 crop prices and production.

Also, I think we need to look at what's going on in the export market for wheat.

You look at the major exporters you got Argentina, Australia, Canada European Union, India, Kazakhstan, Russia, Ukraine, US.

If you look at those, and you can look at the percentage of exports, 6% Argentina, 10% Australia.

You'd think that it was the country's US 12% Russia 19% that you needed to watch their production.

But you need to watch production on all of these countries because like India only export 2% of the market, but yet that 300 400 million bushels has an impact on price.

The other thing is you look at some major changes say the change in exports this year are production but if you look at the average of these countries you're talking about 90% of the exports and about 75% of production.

There was a 42 million bushel increase in exports this year.

So I mean, some big changes minus 355 plus 582.

But there, the production and the exports are around the world.

They're spread out enough that when you have a loss in one it's made up by increases in others.

- So what news, you know that there's not really a lot going on.

So what should producers be focusing on then?

- Right now, Concentrate on production.

I think price is pretty level.

It's gonna stay level.

We could get a surprise but it could be a surprise up or surprise down.

- So just normal February, early March type of stuff.

- That's right.

- All righty.

Thanks Kim.

Dr. Kim Anderson, Grain Marketing Specialist here at Oklahoma State University.

- There's been a lot of talk about eggs lately amid record prices at the grocery store.

OSU Extension, Food Economist, Dr. Rodney Holcomb gets us up to speed.

- You know, going back just a couple of years prior to 2021, in fact the price of eggs wholesale would be under a dollar a dozen.

And then in the last couple of years we've seen that rise to well over $2, $3 $4 per dozen on on a wholesale basis which means by the time you're paying the retail price out the door of the supermarket you're paying well over $5 in many cases.

There've been a lot of things that have played a role in this drastic increase in price.

We can go back a couple of years and see a ramping up of feed grains and oil seed prices.

And basically when you're talking eggs you're talking about the conversion of feed grains into that protein source.

So as your feed ingredients went up so did the egg prices at the same time chemicals went up.

So what did it take to grow those feed grains?

What did it take to transport those eggs?

So whether it's fertilizer or fuel, those prices also ramped up substantially over the last just two years.

- Through all of that on top of something that nobody wanted, avian flu.

And we lost more than 10% of our laying hens last year.

So you got a limitation on supply and a huge increase in costs.

When you're talking about broiler chickens, the chickens for meat, the small broilers, roaster chickens that you may get at Walmart, for example takes a matter of four to six weeks from hatch to the time that they're grown ready to go.

Those four pound birds you get to the eight, nine pound bird, you're talking six to eight weeks.

When you're talking a good laying hen for her to reach maturity, just the breeds that we use for egg laying chickens, it's gonna take months from hatching to the point where that hen is at a sexual maturity and able to be a consistent egg layer.

So it takes months to get that hen up to where we can replace one of the 44 million laying hens that we've lost in the last year.

It's gonna take a little bit of time.

We're past the peak demand.

Holiday season.

we demand eggs for everything.

So we're past that peak.

So demand is dropped off a little bit.

Supply is slowly building back up.

So even though we hit those peak prices right about the end of December, beginning of January, wholesale prices are starting to dip a little bit but it's still gonna be a few months before we see those prices go down to something that we think is consistent with the rest of food prices.

I think, you know, we look at eggs as being the low cost protein source when prices of beef, pork, poultry, when they all get high, those on high protein diets, keto diets, they look at eggs as a substitute.

So we'll get the protein but it'll be our low-cost substitute.

Unfortunately, everything went up dramatically high in price.

So eggs just kind of followed.

But I think as we see everything else level off we'll see the eggs come down as well.

- The USDA releases an egg market news report every week.

We have a link for you @sunup.okstate.edu.

And with all this talk of egg prices more people are considering backyard chickens.

Here's Dana Zook with some tips on getting started.

- Really we're gonna come up on spring here in the next couple months.

And springtime is time when a lot of people get into backyard chickens.

If you've had them before maybe gotten out of it it's a time when people buy chicks.

There is a lot of chicks available this time of year.

The one thing we wanted to bring to light is maybe to think about a few things before you jump into kind of a backyard chicken adventure.

The first thing to think about is actually to evaluate whether you can have chickens or not, where you live.

If you live in a rural area, it's probably not a question.

You can probably have them.

But if you live in an urban setting, such as in town or kind of on an acreage type situation, you might have an ordinance that may limit you for the number of birds you can have or the type of birds.

A lot of times, for instance maybe you can only have four or five hens, or for instance your city ordinance doesn't allow roosters because of the noise and that sort of thing.

The next thing that's important is housing.

Evaluate what sort of housing you would need.

Of course, you need to base the house on size, based on the number of birds you can have.

Typically, we recommend about two square feet for a small breed.

For larger breed chickens we recommend about four square feet in the coop.

If you're in an urban setting, you will need to keep them confined.

You will need a run for those chickens.

So basically double that size for chickens in the run as well, 'cause they need some space to move around.

But if you have chicks, definitely housing includes the brooder.

You need a transition from the brooder to the house.

So if you got the housing figured out think about the equipment.

You need a feeder, water, such as what we see here in this coop behind me.

There's feeding and watering situations and this is a pretty elaborate coop and you don't need something necessarily like this.

But a good structure is important.

If you're gonna obtain your chicks through mail, look for a hatchery that's NPIP certified.

It monitors diseases, lots of types of diseases in the poultry industry and more specifically avian influenza right now.

So it's important to keep a bio secure kind of location for your birds.

It's exciting to have them and you wanna share them with everybody but we wanna make sure that we're keeping those birds safe.

But we also wanna keep the people safe, so children, the elderly, and anyone who has really not come in contact with salmonella and other diseases that poultry can carry.

We wanna make sure that we use cleanliness and those types of things to keep people safe when they're handling or when they're around our birds.

It's important to be aware that predation can be an issue even with backyard chickens.

The thing to be aware of is to make sure that you keep the area clean around your operation so that there's no hiding places for lots of predators.

So, skunks, raccoons, a variety of things.

Don't give them the opportunity to get at your birds.

Make sure your structure is sound, your fencing is buried under the ground, so that their critters can't dig under and get your chickens.

So just keep a sound and safe structure for your birds to prevent any sort of predation.

- If you haven't seen it yet, be sure to check out the Extension Experience Podcast hosted by Dana Zook and our extension colleagues.

Our own Curtis Hair from Sunup was a recent guest talking about what it takes to put the show on the air each and every week, and what goes on behind the scenes.

Speaking of which, we better get to work on next week's show.

I'm Lyndall Stout.

We'll see you next time for Sunup.