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

I'm Lyndall Stout.

We start right off today talking about the cattle markets and what producers need to do should this drought continue.

Here's SUNUP's guest interviewer, Melissa Mouer, talking with our extension livestock marketing specialist, Dr. Derrell Peel.

(upbeat music) - Joining us today is Derrell Peel, extension livestock marketing specialist, here to talk to us about the markets and the impact the drought is having on them.

Good morning.

- Good morning.

- So drought conditions have advanced across nearly all of Oklahoma.

What impact is this having on cattle markets?

- You know, Oklahoma has like 96% covered in drought right now.

So the immediate impact of course, is on our wheat pasture.

It's the time of year we've got a lot of cattle out on wheat.

I've talked to a number of producers recently.

The wheat pasture is dwindling fast.

Most producers are feeding hay, trying to extend what pasture they have.

Some of the cattle I know have already been removed and had to go to town.

So that's what we're dealing with here in the short run at this point in time.

- Okay, so what can we expect in these upcoming months?

- Well, as we go forward, you know, if it stays like this or continues to get worse, then we're gonna have a lot of impacts in a couple of months.

Once we get to springtime, so two months from now, from that point on we could see a lot of impacts, not only in Oklahoma, but obviously much of the country right now is in serious drought.

About 70% of the U.S. is abnormally dry or in some stage of drought.

So we could see a lot of impacts, not only on the individual producers who are impacted, but also market impacts because we could start to see a lot of forced liquidation of cattle, and that would lead to, you know, a lot of market impacts.

Could be cows, it could be feeder cattle.

Across the board, we might see significant impacts.

- Okay, well, I know we're still in winter but is there anything that producers can be doing now?

- You know, again, springtime will be the most critical time but it's never too early to start thinking about what you might have to do.

You know, producers need to take stock of what they have.

We've got hay, we're trying to get through the winter, but you know, really, you know, sort of evaluate the resources you have and then start thinking about if I have to make some of those painful decisions, what order would I do things?

If I have to liquidate cows, you know which cattle, heifers, cows, that sort of things.

Any stocker cattle.

Put those in order and kinda set a date for when decisions have to be made.

Droughts are very emotional things, obviously, because it forces us to do things we really don't want to have to do.

So it's very important to sort of have a plan to guide you and sort of keep you making decisions when they need to be made and not get caught up in the emotional response.

- So what market impacts do you expect to see as we go into spring?

- Well, again, if it stays this way, you know, say April 1st, if it's still the kind of drought conditions we have now, then I would think within three or four months after that, we could see a lot of cow herd liquidation.

So we'll see impacts on the cow market.

Again, even feeder cattle, you know, it'll change the timing of when they go in the feed lots.

So the first six months of the year, if we stay dry, we'll have an awful lot of impacts.

And then of course beyond that, there'll be the subsequent impacts as we go forward.

- Okay, that's a lot of information.

Thank you very much.

We'll keep our eye on the markets and see what happens.

Thank you very much, Dr. Peel.

(upbeat music ends) - With tighter margins, a lot of producers are working towards minimizing financial risk.

Luckily, we have a lot of available fact sheets and other materials to help you reach that goal.

One thing to help minimize financial risk is to understand where you are financially right now.

There are three main pieces of financial analysis that need to be done.

Your balance sheet, your income statement, and your cash flow sheet.

We have fact sheets available for all three of those in addition to other materials.

And what's really helpful is we have an example farm that carries through throughout those fact sheets.

So you can follow along with that farm and that should help you be able to do your own.

We also have the Farm and Ranch Stress Test.

That really looks at the measures of liquidity, solvency, profitability, and others.

It has a really simple guideline of green, yellow, and red to help you view how your farm is doing.

If all of this is a little bit overwhelming for you, we do have a Farm Financial Planning one-on-one program.

This is where you're paired with someone in OSU Extension and we work with you to get those things like a balance sheet and a full farm workup done, and we do those different ratios for you, like liquidity ratios and solvency ratios, and talk you through that and let you know how your farm is doing.

- If you're interested in expanding your farm or trying something different, we have enterprise budgets available for you to look and see what the potential profitability and potential costs are for adding a new or different enterprise.

There's a lot of different options to help you minimize your financial risk.

(playful music) - Welcome to the Mesonet weather report.

I'm Wes Lee.

We just experienced the coldest storm of the year this past week.

I hope you didn't lose power and could stay inside and ride out the severe weather.

Livestock, on the other hand, had to face the conditions head on.

For cattle, there is a Mesonet tool called cattle comfort advisor that helps managers prepare for extreme weather conditions.

On Wednesday morning the index was starting to show negative numbers in the panhandle and single digits across much of the state.

This puts cattle into the cold caution or blue color on the map.

It only got worse from there where numbers were expected to drop into almost statewide negative numbers on Thursday and Friday.

These numbers moved the index into the cold danger or purple category.

The tool, with its forecast feature, can help producers feed cattle accordingly.

In general, a cow's energy requirements increase 1% for each degree the cattle comfort index is below 32.

For a cow, wet to the skin, the increased energy requirement begins at 59 and increases 2% for each degree drop.

There are limits in how much and how rapid you change a cow's diet so you may need to start the increased feed a few days earlier and continue on a few days after the storm.

Now here is Gary discussing our state's moisture situation.

- Thanks, Wes, and good morning, everyone.

Well, this winter storm did bring some moisture in the state but it's a little too late for this week's drought monitoring report.

Let's take a look at the map and see where we're at.

We're still the same basic picture for Oklahoma on the drought monitor report this week.

We have the exceptional drought out in the western half of the panhandle.

That's the D4 dark red, one-in-a-50 hundred-year event.

Then we have the red, which is the D3, which covers much of Western Oklahoma over into South Central and North Central Oklahoma.

And then we have some moderate and severe drought extending over into Eastern Oklahoma and parts of Central Oklahoma.

And then of course we have just a little tiny bit of the state that has no color at all.

That's the no drought or no abnormally dry conditions in far east Central Oklahoma.

Winter just has not been kind to us thus far, despite the winter storm we just had.

If we look at the rainfall for the winter so far, that's from December 1st through January 31st, from the Mesonet we do see from two to five inches across far east to Central Oklahoma.

Other parts of east Eastern Oklahoma.

Then we have one to two inches between Central and Eastern Oklahoma.

But then when we get in the western half the state over into South Central and North Central Oklahoma also, we have generally less than an inch.

As we get farther out into Western Oklahoma, less than a quarter inch of rainfall for that two-month period, so definitely not much help there.

And we look at the deficits for that same timeframe, again, one to two-inch deficits over much of the state, in some cases, more than three or four inches below normal.

Definitely not good for the winter months so far.

When we look at that percent of normal map for that same timeframe, again, much of the state less than 50% of normal.

In fact, when we get over into Western Oklahoma it's less than 25% of normal, so just a really dry winter thus far.

We'll see where we come out after this winter storm.

Now the latest US monthly drought outlook for February from the Climate Prediction Center, unfortunately they expect most of that drought to persist across the state where it already exists, maybe a little bit of a relief and maybe outright removal down across far Southeast Oklahoma.

Now the best part of this winter storm is where the snow fell and the ice fell.

It stays right there and melts into the ground, percolates down into the soils and helps replace that soil moisture, so that's a good thing.

That's it for this time.

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

(playful music) - We have an overview today about crops in Oklahoma with Dr. Kim Anderson, our grain marketing specialist.

Kim, just kind of give us an overview to start of which crops are produced in Oklahoma.

- Well, if you look at USDA NASS, the list the crops as hay.

Of course, that's not a planted crop, except for 8% of it which is alfalfa.

Then you have wheat, cotton, corn, soybeans, sorghum.

Those are your major crops.

Then you have pecans, rye, oats, canola and I threw in Sesame just for the fun of it.

And then of course we've got some producers with vegetables and fruits.

- Let's talk about the most popular crops.

Which ones?

- Fall into that category.

- Well, if you look at their rankings it depends on how you define that.

If you're looking at harvested acres 'cause there's planted acres and harvested acres.

Say you've got hay.

So that's mostly just harvested right at 3 million acres.

Wheat, the planted acres the five year average is 4.3 million, the harvested is about 6.7 million acres.

Soybeans 580,000 planted the average, a five year average harvested 555,000.

Cotton, 606,000 acres planted the average harvested is only 477,000.

We'll get to that just a little bit on the risk side of of things.

Corn, about 348,000 acres planted 307,000 or 306,000 harvested.

If you look at sorghum it's planted 305,000 and harvested 257,000, somewhere in that vicinity.

And that's the ranking if you use harvested acres for ranking 'em but if you're using the dollars generated, the gross return hay is $565 million, wheat's 425 million, cottons 270 million, corn's 159 million, soybeans 143 million and sorghum 46 million.

And so if you look at the income from the gross from 'em you're gonna rank your hay, wheat, cotton, corn, soybeans and sorghum.

If you rank 'em by harvested acres then soybeans moves up above corn and cotton.

- With all that in mind how does that translate to the return per acre for each crop?

- Well, if you look at the gross return and that's the numbers we can get from NASS hay is $189 an acre, wheat's $158 an acre, cotton $565 an acre, corn $518 an acre, soybeans 258 and sorghum 180.

You've got corn and cotton over $500 an acre there but those are high costs commodities to produce.

- Let's talk about land use now and how things have changed in the last 10 years.

- Well, we've had some dramatic changes.

If you look at the total acres we've lost 207,000 acres of crop land.

Hay's, essentially no change in hay.

Wheat you've lost 1.2 million acres of harvested wheat.

It's went from about 3.9 million down to 2.7 million.

Soybeans you've gained about 205,000 acres going from 350,000 to 555,000.

Cotton you've gained 311,000 acres, a lot of big increase in cotton.

Corn, only 18,000, a 6% increase and sorghum 48,000.

But overall we've lost 8% of our tillable acres over the last 10 years.

- Let's talk about risk and which crops tend to be the highest in the risk category.

- Now risk is a hard subject to you know to determine what is the risk but let's just look at the difference at the planted acres and harvested acres.

In other words how many acres have been abandoned?

Hay essentially nothing, wheat is 38% but a lot of that is grazing and haying.

Soybeans, you only abandoned on the average, five year average 4%.

Cotton on the five year average is 21% but you look at like 2018 you abandoned 35%, 30% in 19 and if you go back to 2011 she lost 83% of the cotton.

A lot of risk there.

Corn 12% so relatively high yield risk with corn and sorghum 16%.

So you got a lot of risk in your cotton, your corn and your sorghum.

- Lots of numbers today and producers have to crunch a lot of numbers when they're deciding which crops to go for, correct?

- Oh yeah, and we haven't even talked about the cost of production and that risk.

We've could concentrated today on yield risk which is greater than price risk.

- And for those who have never checked out the USDA NASS website there's a ton of information there and you can really drill down on the very, most minutia levels, correct?

- And they've got it organized for you.

You can get it into spreadsheets and manipulate it so you can get it to tell you some stories.

- And present on Sunup, right.

- That's right.

Okay Kim, thank you very much.

Great information.

And for a link to the USDA national agricultural statistics service website we have it for you on sunup.okstate.edu.

(country music) - Good morning Oklahoma.

Welcome to Cow Calf corner on Sunup TV.

This week we talk about preparing for winter calving.

Winter calving always potentially poses some unique challenges to us.

We've got cold weather, potentially wet weather.

Calves born through the winter months can tend to be a little heavier than the ones that come at the end of summer.

And it's the time of year in Oklahoma when we're primarily responsible for providing all the nutrition for cows in the form of harvested forages or supplemental feed.

We're dealing with fewer daylight hours so we create some unique challenges.

So how do we get ready for all this stuff that we're gonna face?

Get prepared.

- When we think about this time of year, hopefully we've taken into account that in the last trimester of pregnancy, or as these cows or heifers begin to lactate, we're gonna see additional protein and energy requirements in those, so we wanna feed accordingly.

As we think about managing the cow herd in times of the year like this, the Mesonet Cattle Comfort Index is something we can find online.

Gives us a feel for the days and the temperatures that we maybe need to provide a little additional nutrition just because of cold or wet weather.

For example, so we get below 32 degrees, for every degree colder than that we are, we increase a cow's energy requirements by about 1%.

If you've got a wet hair coat or a cow is wet all the way to the skin, that's gonna go up by 2% for each one degree temperature we are below 32.

So that's a handy tool we can use in management to feed accordingly.

If we think about just managing those cows themselves, if we can possibly set up some wind breaks, some shelter, potentially some bedding in cases which we may have muddy ground or snow on the ground, that can be really beneficial to cows.

And it's good if we can separate our heifers from the mature cow herd, just because heifers are inexperienced, they may need a little more assistance in terms of the calving process or helping claim that calf when it comes along for the first time.

If we think about other things we can do to be prepared, it's good to do a walkthrough on the corral or the working pens, make sure our alleyway, our chute, all that stuff is in good working order.

If we've got a calving barn or area that we work cattle, making sure the lights are in good working order is important so we're not tackling that or dealing with it at the same time we find ourself trying to provide assistance for that first heifer that needs help.

And it's good to have what we refer to as a calving kit put together and just various things you may need through the process of calving season.

In no particular order, I've got some stuff laid out on the table here.

But in the calving kit, we can pack it around in a bucket, a toolbox, or some kind of cooler.

Some paper towels, potentially a larger bath towel that you may want to have on hand if you get a wet calf or something that needs to be cleaned up or dried off.

Some kind of a lubricant, which we'd put in a smaller bottle to keep in our calving kit.

We wouldn't want that whole gallon jug necessarily with us.

Some sort of antiseptic if we have to intervene and help a heifer or cow.

We want to be clean.

We want some lubrication for that.

A flashlight is also pretty handy and probably all of us anymore have got an iPhone that comes equipped with a flashlight function on it.

So as opposed to having flashlight and batteries, you may just use your iPhone in some cases for light.

OB chains are gonna be pretty critical to have if we have to provide assistance to get those on.

We've got the OB chains and the handles there for those.

I don't have a calf puller to show you this morning but obviously we wanna know where that's at.

Make sure it is clean and in good working order.

A rope halter is something I always like to have on hand.

I think it comes in really handy.

Certain cows are heifers.

If we can't get 'em to a shoot, just to be able to halter 'em up and maybe tie 'em off to the pickup or whatever while we provide assistance can be really beneficial.

OB sleeves are gonna be handy.

Maybe we don't need the whole box, but just take a half dozen of those sleeves out, put it in our calving kit so we've got it if we need it.

And if we get in situations where we need to provide colostrum, whatever form of colostrum we've got on hand and a feeding tube and bottle to get that colostrum into those baby calves in the first few hours that they're born becomes really critical.

So those are the things I would have on hand in my calving kit.

Again, the key thing is to be prepared.

We think about a baby calf whenever it hits the ground this time of year, it's comin' out of its mother's womb which is 101 to 102 degrees.

If a calf was born here this morning, that means it came at about an 80 degree temperature drop from what it had been living in for the past 280 days or so, and we need to be there to intervene and help if we've got cold, wet, muddy, or potentially snowy ground, and those calves are equipped with some brown adipose tissue.

It's gonna help 'em burn it and generate some internal heat.

But if it gets extremely cold, a lot of this stuff is gonna be important to us to get those calves off to a good start.

If they do get a little cold stress or hypothermia, it makes them more susceptible to navel infections, scours, and pneumonia, and we want to head that off as well as helping them get off to a good start.

Thanks for joining us this week on Cow-Calf Corner.

We are talking now about buying and selling used farm equipmnet with Dr. John Long, our extension Ag engineer.

John, kind of give us an idea of what the situation is with ag equipment, tractors, combines, all of that right now.

It's kind of like a lot of other things we're seeing in manufacturing.

- Yeah, it's pretty similar type of story that we're seeing in the Ag sector compared to a lot of other manufacturing.

If we look at the prices of used equipment, the unavailability of new equipment, it's all around based off of that.

- So, what in fact are we seeing, what's causing this, dive into that a little bit in terms of the supply chain issues and the ability to get new tractors and new equipment and then what that's causing with the the backlog of maybe the availability of used equipment and then what's that doing to prices?

- Sure, so a lot of the new equipment that we're talking about if you been to a dealer lot in the past year to year and a half, you've seen the dwindling of stocked equipment at new dealer equipment type of things and a lot of that has to do with the manufacturing process.

What's happening in recent years, we've shifted a lot of our manufacturing to just time manufacturing which means you're relying on the supply chain, you're relying on that material in to build that new planner or combine and whenever that supply chain gets a little bit held up, broken, it makes it more difficult to actually produce those things and so a lot of our manufacturers are having a lot of issues getting those things in which means they're unable to make the quantity of new equipment that we want them to have and they want to have to be able to sell to growers.

And so, that kind of creates a trickle down effect with used equipment because a lot of new equipment, I'd say nine times out 10, new equipment's gonna have some type of trade in associated with it and so that trade in is something that they're gonna turn back around and sell to someone else, they're gonna trade in their piece of equipment and it kind of becomes a kind of a process, a wash down of used equipment and whenever we don't have the new equipment there, it kind of holds up the process and makes it more difficult for people to get in that and disrupts that whole chain.

- As a result of this, we're also seeing some record prices at the auctions and that can kind of be a sticker shock, right?

And it's sort of a ripple of all of this.

- Yeah, usually auctions are a place where we can go to liquidate equipment that we don't want to sit there and wait on, dealers use that a lot for liquidating used equipment.

We talked about the kinda wash down equipment, when we get to the lower end of equipment, a lot of times they're gonna try to auction it off to get it turned over, to not hold it in a lot and be able to get some of their accrue some of their money on that.

And so, now we have, due to that supply chain issue and having less equipment available, we have more people going to the auction as a means to try to accrue inventory.

So, even dealers are going there as a way to pull the inventory, so that drives prices up, more demand, prices are gonna go up and unfortunately, that's what we're gonna see at least for the near term.

- Well, I think the last question is for you to look into your crystal ball and tell us when this will all normalize but that's pretty difficult to answer.

- Definitely, if I had that answer I'd be able to answer a lot of other questions, maybe that other people have.

But, it's something we're just gonna have to deal with, at least in the the near term, there are some advantages, if you do have some use equipment available that you're not using, now's a great time to turn over some of that stuff and create some extra liquid cash available for your operation.

If you're in the other hand, waiting for equipment, I don't really have a good answer to tell you when to to go, but you gotta kind of make do with what you can at this point and then hopefully the mark will turn around like it usually does.

- So, just be patient everyone, right?

- That's right.

- Great conversation, John, we appreciate your time today "SunUp."

Preparing for extend a drought, that's the important topic covered this month in the "Rancher's Thursday Lunchtime Series" webinar.

Here are the dates, February 10th, 17th and 24th.

It always kicks off at noon and registration is required.

Fill out the brief registration form by going to sunup.okstate.edu.

OSU Extension is also hosting the upcoming Pecan Management course.

It features classroom and hands on information each month for current and perspective growers and is designed to take participants from the dormancy phase all the way through the growing season.

Learn more and sign up by the February 18th deadline on our website and be sure to tune in to the new season of our sister show "Oklahoma Gardening."

Host Casey Hentges and the team will debut the 48th season of "Oklahoma Gardening" on February 12th, right here on OETA.

You can watch the show Saturday mornings at 11:00 and Sundays at 3:00 in the afternoon and, of course, anytime on the "Oklahoma Gardening" website and YouTube channel.

That'll do it for us 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 music) - February 2nd brings out of hiding the most famous weather forecaster in the world, Punxsutawney Phil.

He, of course, is the star of the show on Groundhog Day for at least the last 120 years.

You know the saying, if he sees his shadow then expect six more weeks of winter.

Well, this year he did indeed see, or are more accurately, cast a shadow but don't get too worried about the prediction.

He has seen his shadow about four out of five years and the accuracy of his long term prediction is pretty dismal at being only right 39% of the time.

So, enjoy the tradition, but don't put too much stock in Phil's meteorological skills.