- Good morning.

We have a great show lined up for you today on Sunup Avian Influenza has made its way to Oklahoma what you need to know to keep your backyard chicken flock safe this spring.

We'll also check to see how the cattle markets are performing in the new year.

And with drought expanding conditions are right for a bad wildfire season.

But there are things you can do now to protect your land and your property.

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

Hello everyone and welcome to sunup.

I'm Lyndall Stout.

A case of avian influenza has been reported in Wagner County.

So today we wanna begin with sun ups Curtis Hare, talking with OSU extension veterinarian, Dr.

Barry Whitworth about the latest on the case and some tips on how to keep your flock safe this time of year.

- Well, as Lindel mentioned, there was a case of avian influenza found in Wagner County and Barry, this was kind of expected this time of year.

So it's not earth shattering news, but it's something that producers do need to keep in mind, right?

- That is correct.

I think if we listen to what Dr.

Hall has to say, there's about 17% of our wild water fowl that are testing positive for high avian influenza.

So it's important I think for backyard producers especially to realize this and to protect their flocks.

- And we've been talking about this for the past couple years.

This has been an issue, I think, dating back since 2022, - Right, right.

February 8th, 2022 is when this outbreak began.

- So when we talk about things that producers can do to kind of keep it out of their flock, what are some of those measures?

- Well, the most important thing is, is follow your biosecurity protocols.

And so we do everything possible we can to make sure that our birds do not have contact with wild animals.

So we don't want 'em, if you've got a pond on your place, you don't want that to be your water source for your backyard chickens, because we know water, you know wildlife, wild birds and, and the waterfowl are gonna go there.

You wanna do everything you can to keep things sanitized, clean, you know, keep your waters feeders all cleaned all the time, your coop clean.

Always remember yourself as a possible vector of the disease.

So make sure you have designated clothing I would wear, have some coveralls I wear every day.

Designated shoes that you keep clean, you don't want to go to town, go to the feed store and then go back and take care of your chickens.

Okay?

Don't do something like that.

Make sure you're always changing your shoes.

You got designated wear gloves and those types of things are really important as far as protecting your flock.

- And right now is the time when those waterfowl, those migratory birds especially are moving, especially the Canadian geese.

'cause you can see them flying overhead constantly this time of year.

- That is correct.

I mean, they're on the move and when you say flying overhead, don't forget that those animals are gonna, are gonna poop in the sky and where those droppings fall, that's where the virus is gonna be.

So you need to think about as far as your coop is concerned, do you have a tarp or something over your pen in some way to protect, again from getting, keeping it from getting contaminated - And shared water sources as well.

Right, - Exactly.

That's what I say.

If you've got a pond and you're letting your chicken drink outta that pond, that's not going to, that's, that's bad.

Okay.

'cause those waterfowl are gonna hit that pond and again, they're gonna defecate in that pond and that virus is liable to be in that pond.

- So what are some symptoms or some signs that we can look out for if a producer expects that there might be avian influenza in their flock?

- Well, typically, and we're talking about influenza subtype, H five N one, which is high avian influenza.

Typically in those, you're gonna see large number of sick birds or large number of deaths.

All of a sudden too, we're talking about, I wake up one morning, I go out, look at my chickens, and I've got a bunch of sick chickens, I've got a bunch of dead chickens.

If you get past that, you're gonna look for, and, and if it's a mild form, it's gonna be respiratory songs, you know, nasal discharge, ocular discharge, maybe coughing, sneezing, those types of things.

But typically in the very, as far as in the worst case scenario, when you find either lots of deads or lots of sick, it's gonna infect all organs, neurological, you know, you're gonna have what we call tort, you know, these twisted necks or these birds are gonna be reluctant, you know, have problems walking, ataxia, stumbling, those types of things will also infect the other as far as other organs in the body.

So you may have diarrhea.

These birds typically are gonna have ruffle feathers.

I mean, they're just gonna look unkempt and just, they're just not doing good.

- Alright, thanks Barry.

Dr.

Barry Whitworth, OSU extension veterinarian in Hino, Oklahoma State University.

And if you would like a link to Dr.

Hall's office, go to our website, sunup.OKstate.edu.

- Good morning everyone.

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

Well, it's been a few weeks since we spoke.

I hope you had a great holiday season.

I did mostly except the part where I had to keep adding colors to the Oklahoma drought map.

Let's take a look at that newest map.

Well, taking a look at that new map, we do see some of that extreme drought.

The red expanded down in southwest Oklahoma from central through south central Oklahoma.

And we now have a new glob down there in southeast Oklahoma.

So not good when those areas are surrounded by that severe drought, the darker brown.

And then we have the tan moderate drought covering much of the rest of the state.

Only south, only northwestern, Oklahoma rather, has escaped the new colors.

Unfortunately, well a lot of the damage was done during December.

It was the second driest December on record with a statewide average of 0.11 inches.

So very dry across the state.

Nobody had a good rainfall and some areas had no rainfall, so not a good look for December.

And if we take a look at that deficit map, we had deficits of about a half inch across the panhandle to more than four and a half inches down across far southeast Oklahoma.

Looks like a climatological rainfall map or lack thereof for the state.

Actually looking at that percent of normal rainfall map for December, 2025, I mean most areas, less than 10% of normal.

In fact, some cases we had areas less than 1% of normal and 0% of normal.

So not very good at all across the state for December, 2025.

And the unusually warm weather didn't help that drought either.

It did add to the evaporation of that soil moisture.

Basically we were about five five degrees above normal across the state for December, 2025.

It was the fifth warmest December on record.

So the second driest December and the fifth warmest certainly added to those drought woes across the state of Oklahoma.

Now let's take a look forward.

Unfortunately, I don't see any good rains or even snows as we go through the next week.

However, at the end of next week, we do see the possibility of some moisture.

We do see the climate prediction centers.

Well, it's a prediction for or outlook for increased odds of above normal precipitation, especially across eastern Oklahoma.

And even near normal across western Oklahoma is better than below normal.

So that's a good change.

Also, maybe a little bit milder weather as we see on the temperature outlook.

So a pretty horrible December drought wise for the state of Oklahoma with a lack of rainfall, too much warm weather, and we did get some of that rainfall during January.

We definitely need to spread that out and get a lot more actually to start solving this drought problem.

That's it for this time.

We'll see you next time on the Mesonet weather report.

- It's that time of year again, the annual Sunup Viewer survey.

We wanna hear from you.

Let us know what you like about the show and what you would like to see more or less of.

We look forward to hearing your feedback each year and definitely appreciate your input.

For a link to our viewer survey, just scan the QR code on your screen or go to the sunup website, sunup.OKstate.edu.

We are joined now by Dr.

Darrel Peele, our OSU extension Livestock marketing specialist.

And Darrel, we have a new year.

How are the, how are the cattle markets doing as as we're getting started?

- Yeah, you know, fourth quarter of last year was a little bit rough.

We had a lot of turbulence, but by the end of December we were seeing it settle down a little bit.

So we're starting off in the new year.

Very strong with cattle markets, feeder cattle markets, fed cattle markets have all come out very strong here early in the year.

And I think we, you know, we've picked back up with the strong fundamentals that are driving this market.

- What is the latest that you're keeping track of in terms of beef imports and exports?

- Yeah, you know, the shutdown delays caused a lot of delay in that data.

So we just recently got data through October, so we're still catching up on that data.

But bottom line is, you know, we continue to see exports lagging behind.

We knew that would happen with the high prices and decreased production we've got in the US.

So we're down about 12 to 13% on beef exports for the year.

Most of our markets are down, of course, the big one is China because we've been in a tariff and trade war with them.

So we're essentially out of the China market right now.

On the import side, of course, there's been a lot of talk about beef imports the last few months, imports were up through the first 10 months of last year, about 20%.

And Australia's the biggest source of beef imports.

Brazil was the biggest source through the first half of the year.

But then with the additional tariffs and all of the turbulence associated with Brazil, they fell off in the, in the, at least through September and October.

And then of course those tariffs went away in November.

So we have to wait and see where, where they come back to at the end of the year.

But you know, again, imports are up trying to supplement the fact that beef supplies are, are down in the us.

- Keeping on that theme, what are some of the supply and demand fundamentals to keep in mind in, in 2026?

- Yeah, so you know, in addition to that, obviously we're still watching this cattle cycle thing.

We'll be getting USDA data the end of the month on where we are with beef curd inventories, and maybe more importantly, replacement heifer inventories.

I expect that we've stabilized the beef cow herd.

It might even be up just a smidge, but that's because beef cow slaughter has dropped so much.

Culling rates have dropped so much the last couple of years.

I think it's gonna show that we have very limited prospects for any herd growth in 2026 and probably 2027 as well.

So we're still continuing with these very tight fundamentals and in fact, until we, or when we start retaining more heifers, it's gonna mean that feeder cattle supplies will get even tighter.

Feedlot inventories will continue to fall.

- What does all this mean for cattle producers in the year ahead?

- Yeah, you know, again, the fundamentals, both supply and demand supporting this market.

We're gonna continue to see prices.

We expect higher average prices for cattle and beef in 2026.

So you know, producers want to just be positioned as well as they can to take advantage of that.

You know, everybody's situation's a little different, but certainly unless we get into, you know, some additional weather issues or other things, there's opportunities for producers that really are unprecedented as we go forward with the level of cattle, cattle prices that we're seeing.

- All right, Darrell, thanks a lot.

We'll see you again next time.

- I'm Mark Turner, wildlife extension specialist at OSU.

And today we're gonna be talking about habitat management practices that you can be thinking about doing on your property during the winter.

It's getting a little bit cold outside.

A lot of folks are thinking about either, either hunting or they've just ended the hunting season, but now is a great time of year to get out on your property and apply some habitat management practices, especially work that might be either a little bit more difficult to do during the summertime because it's hot out or work that that just really makes sense to do during the wintertime.

For example, the winter is a great time of the year to get out in the woods with a chainsaw and conduct four stand improvement on your property techniques such as girdle and spray or hack and squirt or just cut stump treatments are excellent to do this time of the year, it's obviously a lot more comfortable to be out working in the woods during the wintertime.

You're not getting as sweaty, there's not as many ticks to deal with and certainly you can have just as good of effects.

And so getting out in the woods with a chainsaw, trying to kill species that are undesirable while increasing the amount of sunlight that's hitting the ground, that could be a great thing for wildlife to do this time of the year.

Speaking of working with a chainsaw, you can also get out and consider cutting eastern red cedar again, all the same reasons that we might not wanna do that in the summertime, just the heat and the ticks.

Make this time of year a great time to cut eastern red cedar in, in both forest systems as well as in range land where they're encroaching.

If you are forested systems and you've got a really dense stand of Eastern, eastern red cedar, you can consider felling them and doing what we call the cut and stuff method where we would cut them and then stuff them up underneath other red cedar.

And that just would allow basically more intense fire whenever we come back and burn that to kill the remaining red cedar in that stand.

If you're working in more op open systems, one thing that you might consider doing this time of the year is disking in areas that are gonna serve as brooding cover as well as forage for deer.

This is a great time of the year to get out there with a disc on a tractor and areas that have two dents of native grass cover go through and and run a disc over that area to break up the ground.

That's gonna promote a lot of annuals, such as common ragweed or annual sunflower or partridge pea, all of which provide excellent brooding cover for Bob White quail as well as for wild turkeys.

And those species are also highly selected deer forages that are gonna provide a lot of nutrition for deer.

So, so consider areas that you wanna provide brooding cover going out and disking that area because, because those animals are gonna use that readily as opposed to something that has a lot more dense vegetation.

And then finally, regardless of whether you're working in the woods or in rangeland systems or even in fields on your property, you can certainly think about preparing for the prescribed burning season.

A lot of dormant season burns are gonna be taking place in January, February, and March.

And so go ahead and think about getting your fire brakes dissed in, or if you need to use a bulldozer to put them in or even a leaf blower, regardless of the technique you're using to put your fire brakes in place.

Think about getting them in in place well ahead of time and that's gonna save you a lot of a lot of trouble whenever the burn days come up and, and you maybe didn't take as much time to prepare.

So think about getting your fire bricks ready, well ahead of the burning season.

Now is an excellent time to do that.

For more information on all these habitat management practices I've talked about today, check out some of the resources on the sunup website.

- Good morning, Oklahoma.

Welcome to Cow-Calf Corner.

This week we follow up the topic of what a good bull should be worth in 2026 in response to a producer question of what are the pros and cons of leasing bulls?

Why do we get into this question?

We're in a robust time in the cattle market, purchase of new seed stock can be expensive.

Do we actually save anything potentially leasing?

Well, there's definitely some upside if we think about not having that capital expenditure upfront of purchasing the bull.

And then as we look through, generally, since we only are gonna use a lease bull during the breeding season, whether that's 45 to 90 days, whatever number we elect to lease the bull for, we're gonna save some money during the rest of the year.

Think about it as the off season relative to feed vet costs, labor, potentially even facilities to keep that bull or our herd bulls safe and secure when they're not breeding cows.

And so bull ownership, thinking outside the breeding season realistically has gotta a cost of several hundred dollars a year, which we potentially save if we can do a bull lease in the current market.

Bull leases or the breeding fee part of this typically start at about $25 a day.

That's gonna vary based on the quality of the bull and particularly the genetic potential of the bull.

Better bulls are gonna be worth more to lease.

Some breeders may structure this by the month, they may structure it by the breeding season, but let's use $25 a day as a starting point thinking about that breeding fee.

Second thing we're gonna get into is some sort of a mortality insurance policy on that bull.

You are going to have to take out some sort of an insurance policy that is payable to the owner of the bull should something happen and the bull die during the lease.

I recently priced a mortality policy right now for a 60 day policy, we could ensure at three point a half percent of the value of the bull a 90 day policy's right at 4%.

The other thing we've got to address here is herd health.

And we have to think about this from both sides of the equation.

If we're gonna lease a bull, we're better off leasing a virgin yearling bull so that we know we're not potentially gonna bring something into our cow herd on the backside of this lease.

At the very least, we're gonna need a negative test for trich before that bull can be returned to the seed stock vendor that actually leased us the bull.

So bottom line, what are we looking at here?

We'll work through an example.

If we wanted to lease a 15 month old bull at that age, we'd expect him to be capable of servicing about 15 cows during a 60 day breeding season.

So a 60 day lease at $25 a day, we got a breeding fee in here of $1,500.

If we value the bull at $10,000, we're going to take a 60 day mortality policy out on him at about three and a half percent.

We can add in another $350.

We're gonna have a trick test at the end of this.

Let's just ballpark that at $75.

And the other thing we need to consider that is a normal part of a bull lease that I haven't addressed yet is typically there's some sort of an agreement on a repayment to regain weight that a bull loses during that breeding season.

Right now, let's say that we agreed to a dollar a pound cost to gain, to regain whatever weight is lost, and both leaser and leasee need to address this upfront and reach some sort of an agreement as to a reasonable weight loss on that bull.

So let's say the bull loses a hundred pounds during the lease.

We've agreed to a cost of regain of $1 a pound.

We're gonna add another dollar into the cost of that bull lease.

We're looking at a little over $2,000 to lease a bull for 60 days.

If that bull covers 15 cows or heifers, that pencils out to about $135 per female service.

How does that compare to if we are purchasing bulls?

Well, let's just assume that bulls last until about the age of six and service about 140 females during their lifetime as a herd bull.

So if a bull is purchased for $5,600, that equates to about $40 per female service.

If we jump up to a bull purchase for 14,000, that's about a hundred dollars per female purchase.

So if we look at it on that basis, it is le less costly to actually purchase the bull.

So I encourage producers, do the math, think through the pros and cons.

Are you better off trying to lease?

Are you better off trying to own?

If you're interested in lease, I would be reaching out to seed stock vendors at this time of year, well in advance of the breeding season to make sure that they've got bull availability and interest in leasing bulls.

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

- Finally today, Oklahomans know the scenario all too well week after week of little to no rain translate to an elevated risk of wildfires late winter into the spring.

So today, OSU extension fire ecologist, John Weir has some tips on protecting your land and your homes.

- So my name is John Weir, I'm a senior extension specialist.

I'm the prescribed fire and Fire ecology specialists here at Oklahoma State University.

You know, we're getting into, we're this time of year, we're already here.

It's after the first year we're in the dormant season.

We're in the driest time of year, and so we're talking about wildfires and wildfire prevention and wildfire preparedness with the abundant rainfall that we received over the entire state.

We have a lot of fuel out there this year that's capable of producing some pretty good wildfires.

If we, if we're not careful or the conditions get right to do that.

The biggest thing to think about for safety wise is, again, remember the wintertime when it snows is not the time to burn brush piles.

This is not the time to burn brush piles.

Again, snow doesn't last that long Here in Oklahoma, we got too many, one too much one hour fuels all the, all those grassy herbaceous fuels that we have.

Or one hour fuels, which means that they can dry out within an hour and catch fire after that snow melts and stuff.

So we need to be really careful.

Again, think about May, June is the best time to burn brush piles here in Oklahoma.

So we need to think about being, being careful out there with what we're doing, activities, welding, any kinda other activities.

Just think about a plan, a plan of action.

How are you gonna protect your property?

How are you gonna protect your personal properties and structures around your house?

So remember, think to take the time to clean up around them.

Move flammable materials well away from homes, barns, any kind of structures, practice especially on barns and shop buildings and stuff.

Practice and maintain, keeping your doors shut, windows shut down and stuff on those buildings.

So if a fire does occur, embers can't have a point of entry to get inside those buildings.

Store equipment and other things and areas that have very little fuel.

You know, if you've got bare ground or gravel lots, that's great, but if not, think about mowing.

Also, clean your equipment off after the, after being used.

'cause again, a lot of times, especially like with mowers, hay equipment, you get a lot of vegetation and stuff that collects on that equipment.

That's an avenue for an ember to catch.

Think also about a plan if you have livestock and things like that.

Where, where are we gonna go with them?

What are we gonna do in the event of that, of a wildfire happening?

And, and thinking about that.

You know, have a plan.

Talk to your family about it.

Talk to people that work with you or for you and, and, and go over, you know, what, what are we gonna do?

How are we gonna protect ourselves?

You know, that's the most important thing is personal protection and keeping yourself safe.

Again, remember, don't ever get in front of a wildfire.

They're moving way too fast.

The, the implications of that can be very serious with injury or even, you know, unfortunately fatalities that we've seen in the past of people trying to do that.

The other thing that we have to remember is again, you know, we do have, you know, we've got great volunteer fire departments and folks that work and try to do really hard.

But again, a lot of times when we have those big wildfires and those wildfire event days that we have, there's just not enough people out there.

So you gotta think about that.

My structures and my buildings and things like that are gonna have to stand alone because nobody's gonna be there to protect them.

Think about that safety zone right there around that building.

You know, within five, 10 feet of that building, remove all flammable materials, things like that, that are away, that are nearby.

Get them away from that.

Like on a home.

Don't stack your firewood right next to the house underneath in the eave.

You know, if you have a lot of patio furniture, you know, remove the cushions, bring them inside so that there's not flammable things that could do that.

If you have wooden decks, clean out underneath them or make sure that you have areas where leaves and things can't collect in there.

Guttering.

Make sure if you've got trees with leaves around your home, clean those gutters out and get things like that.

So those are just some simple things that we ought to think about and to do to keep that.

Again, going back to other things on the farm and ranch.

Hay storage.

This time of year people got a lot of hay.

Again, thinking about spreading your hay out, don't put it in too much.

Again, a lot of times some of the insurance companies will only insure so many bales of hay in one area.

So spread out your, your hay storage in, in areas.

So again, if you're interested in more information about wildfire safety and what you can do, we have fact sheets and some, and a prescribed fire checklist of things that you need to do to check off and say, what have I done?

Or what am I gonna do to prepare?

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

A reminder, you can see Sunup anytime on our website.

Follow us on social media and stream our segments anytime at youtube.com/sunup tv.

We leave you today with some great cattle footage recorded by our Sunup intern Audra Boyer.

Have a great week everyone.

And remember, Oklahoma agriculture starts at Sunup.