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

I'm Lyndall Stout.

We begin today with an Ag policy update on some important farm bill programs.

Here's our Extension Ag Policy Specialist, Dr. Amy Hagerman.

- It's time one again to contact your local farm service agency office about ARC and PLC election and enrollment for the 2022 crop year.

This only applies to producers who have FSA farms that have base crop acres on them.

Election and enrollment is open until March 15th so if you haven't already made your appointment with your local FSA office, it's definitely time to go ahead and get that appointment made and have the conversation.

A couple of key things to remember.

The first is that these are risk management programs.

They're there to help if something unforeseen happens in the market to bring down prices or affects the yield on your farms.

They're very different programs and they protect against different kinds of risks.

So if you're looking at the PLC program, that stands for price loss coverage.

And it's designed to protect against a decline in the national average marketing price.

This isn't your elevator price, this is the national average for your commodity.

The agricultural risk coverage program actually has two options.

The first is a county-level program that looks at county-level yields, and an average in how your farm compares against that.

The guarantees are based on the last five years of yields and then prices to determine a guaranteed revenue.

And a payment is made whenever your revenue and your county falls below that guarantee.

So again, this is a little bit different than the other risk management programs you might have in place like crop insurance, which is very closely tied to your individual farm's production.

Rather, these programs are more tied to county production and the national average prices.

We have a few things going on in the market right now that makes this a little different decision than it has been in years past.

The first is that prices are higher for most crops right now, than they've been in five years.

That means for our PLC program, we have currently, prices that are well above the trigger prices, the references prices for that program.

However, you've gotta change your thinking to that marketing year that's occurring.

You need to think at least 12 months out on your price expectations and what you think the market is going to do when you're thinking about whether or not you need price risk management with PLC.

Also, our drought conditions are affecting expectations on county yields.

So when you're thinking about the possibility of ARC county, consider not just the fact of what prices are doing, but also what's happening with yields and yield expectations in your county given our currently very dry conditions.

But again, you gotta think quite a ways out through that 2022 harvest and marketing year.

The final thing I'll point out is that for the first time in quite a long time, we're actually in a market and yield conditions here, in the state of Oklahoma that might actually lead us to consider ARC county very seriously since the first time since 2016, 2017 time period.

So take a moment to think about yield expectations in your county, price expectations nationally, and what that means specifically for your farm.

Also think about it in terms of broader risk management planning.

What else are you doing to protect your operation against risk both for your crops and your livestock.

Have those conversations with your crop insurance agent, your farm service agent, and your county educator to think about risk management options for your operation.

More information is available on Farmers.gov and on the OSU Extension website.

(country music) - There are some things that you can be doing to improve the fishing in your pond.

Begin by asking what is your objective with your pond.

What kind of fishing are you really after?

Are you trying to get trophy bass?

Are you looking for all around good fishing that would be decent-size bass, bluegill, and catfish?

Or are you thinking about your kids or your grandkids?

A kid's fishing pond is gonna require that they can catch something in not too many minutes.

You can't have all three of those objectives in one pond; maybe one and a half at most.

So pick one and know what it is that you're aiming to achieve.

I find that many people do not fish their ponds enough to really get a good picture of what's going on in terms of the fish population so they can improve the fishing.

- How often do you fish yours?

Are you so busy that you really are only out there two or three weekends a year?

That's really not enough to get that mental picture that you need of what's really going on with the different sizes of fish and how well they are fed.

I recommend at least two times a month from spring through fall.

Perhaps you're thinking of purchasing fingerlings to get a shortcut, you know, kind of turbocharge your, the fishing in your pond.

I recommend thinking that through very carefully.

When you stock fingerlings on top of an existing bass population, generally, they're gonna be eaten within a few days.

So they're not cheap.

So you might wanna think that through carefully.

Something to realize is that the major tool you have as a pond owner to improve and maintain good fishing or fishing of any sort in your pond is selective angling.

If you've got a good picture of what's going on, because your catch, analyzing the catch in your pond on a month by month basis, you'll know when one size class is getting over abundant and skinny.

As soon as you see that, that's a sign that you need to go after that, keep all of those that you can catch, and hopefully, in the coming year or so, you will keep your pond from going out of balance.

An out of balance pond is a pond full of scrawny fish that never get up to the catchable size.

There's much more to consider about fishing, much more than we have time to discuss today, but I encourage you to remember that there's always more information available through your county extension office or through facts.okstate.edu.

(upbeat music) - Welcome to this week's Mesonet weather report.

I'm Wes Lee.

The temperatures this winter have been like a pendulum, swinging from one extreme to the other in a short period of time.

You can send the kids to school in a short sleeve shirt one day, and the next you have to dig out the heaviest coat.

On Tuesday, the high temperatures reached all the way up into the high 70s in the state.

By Wednesday afternoon, things swinged the other way as a cool front dropped temperatures by as much as 42 degrees in the panhandle.

As humans, we have ways to deal with rapid temperature changes.

We can stay inside and turn up the heat, or bundle up if we have to go outside.

Cattle, on the other hand, have to tolerate these changes from day to day in their environment.

On Tuesday, it was about perfect for cattle, with the cattle comfort index being right in the middle of the comfortable range.

By the very next day, the range had slipped down into single digits and into the cold caution category.

This rapid temperature change up and down is very tough on cattle.

Temperature stress affects weight gain and can make diseases like pneumonia become more of an issue.

Forecasts seem to indicate dramatic temperature swings are likely to continue next week as well.

Now here's Gary with news on the continuing drought.

- Thanks, Wes, and good morning everyone.

Well, unfortunately that drought continues to worsen across much of the state.

It's not getting any better.

Let's get straight to that new map and see where we're at.

Unfortunately, for the first time since August 21st of 2018, we have an exceptional drought in the state of Oklahoma.

An exceptional drought, or D4 drought, is basically a one and 50 to 100 year event.

And it's now centered over the Eastern sides of Cimarron County and the Western sides of Texas County out in the Oklahoma panhandle.

Now, for much of the rest of the state, we see shades of moderate to extreme drought with severe in there as well.

So very little of the state, other than east central Oklahoma, doing good on drought right now.

No shock at all with the complete lack of precipitation over the last five to six months.

Let's take a look at the rainfall statistics for the cool growing season.

This is since September 1st of 2021.

Look out there at that panhandle region where that D4 drought is.

An inch to an inch and a half of rainfall at the most, so very unfortunate for those folks out there.

Okay over there in far Eastern Oklahoma, and obviously it gets worse as you go to the west.

Some areas with four to six inches, but most areas less than five inches of rainfall over the Western half of the state.

Shows up much more nicely on the percent of normal rainfall map for that same timeframe since September 1st.

Lots of the state, especially across the Western half to two thirds of the state, less than 50% of normal.

And when you get in some parts of Western Oklahoma, it's less than 30% of normal, especially out there in the panhandle, so definitely not good news.

- [Anchor] Over the last five or six months for much of the state.

And while temperatures have calmed down since December, they're still well above normal across the panhandle where that day four route was introduced at times more than 10 degrees higher than normal for those high temperatures.

So definitely still some damage going on due to the unusual work out in that region.

Now, at some point it just gets pretty obvious what we need is precipitation.

Any sort of precipitation right now would be welcome.

I know we don't want any of that freezing rain, but even a little bit of that would be helpful for this drought situation.

That's it for this time.

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

(upbeat guitar music) - Good morning, Oklahoma.

Welcome to Cow-Calf Corner.

We know that in cow-calf operations calving season is a critical time of the year.

And particularly in the winter months like we're in now, it can be an extra big challenge.

This week, we talk about time that we would feed or supplement our cows and how it relates to when those cows would actually calve.

And so the benefit of trying to get more calves born during the daytime is that calves are gonna be born during times when temperatures are warmer, cows are gonna start to calve when they're easier to find, and if any assistance is needed it's easier to provide it during the daytime.

And I know at my age I don't enjoy getting up in the middle of night to go check cows and heifers when they're actually calving so it's always kind of a blessing to see more calves come during the day.

So how do we go about trying to get more calves born during the day?

A simple change in management where we begin to feed our cows late in the day or about at dusk is gonna result in a higher percentage of our cows going into labor and having calves during the daylight hours.

Over the years, there's been quite a bit of data collected on this topic.

As big a study as we have seen in it occurred in Iowa years ago.

Over 1300 cows on about 15 different farms and ranches were fed at dusk and the result of that was about 85% of the calves coming between 6:00 AM and 6:00 PM.

Now, bear in mind when we begin to feed cows in the evening we don't eliminate those calves.

Some are still gonna come through the night but it is an advantage to us in terms of trying to save more calves and finishing calving season with more calves born alive if we can see more of them come during the daylight hours.

A question that backs this up or that comes to mind is how long before calving season do we actually need to implement this management practice of feeding in the evening?

And the studies show that if we start this as soon as a week before calving season, it's gonna result in more calves coming during the day.

If we can implement this management, maybe a few weeks out, it's gonna help and even drive up our percentages of calving during the day even more.

So, just a tidbit or a tip that we keep in mind as kind of old technology.

We don't understand exactly what the mechanism is in the cows that causes this to happen but if you'd like to see more calves coming during the daylight hours when it's easier to save them, begin to supplement and feed your cows at night.

Thanks for joining us on Cow-Calf Corner.

(upbeat guitar music) - We're joined now by Dr. Kim Anderson, our crop marketing specialist.

Kim let's kick things off with the news in the markets.

- Probably the biggest news on wheat is exports.

Exports have been weak the last month and that's probably why our prices have been going down.

You look at corn and beans.

It's what's going on in South America, Brazil and Argentina.

They've had drought problems then they get rain and so that drives those corn and bean prices up and down.

And of course, cotton has just been on a terror.

And the market's been talking about or toying with the high value of the U.S. dollar.

- Let's talk about the U.S. dollar now and what determines that dollar value being high.

- What it is today versus what it was a couple months ago if you want to get down to it.

And if you'll look at since June, you'd go out there, the value of the dollar was around 92 points.

Went up to 94.

It went on up and peaked out here recently in December around 95, 96.

Dropped off a little bit and came back up but it's relatively high because you go back to June, it was in 93, 94.

It's 95, 96 now.

However, if you go back to 2005 through '15, that index was between 70 and 85.

And then if you come up to 2015 to '22, it's been between 95 and 97.

So it's relatively what a high value of the dollar is.

- Let's talk about how crop prices are moving around, starting with wheat.

- [Dr. Anderson] Well, if you look at wheat, and we'd go back to harvest where we had $5.50 wheat, I had a little rally there in July into August and flat as we came out.

It's-- - [Kim] Ironic I think is that we had the peak price of wheat in this year the day before Thanksgiving at $8.50, and then we went down to $7.50 and we had another peak, not quite up to 8.50, it was at 8.30 the day before Christmas.

But what we've got is wheat prices have went from 5.50 up into the 7.50 range.

We got a downtrend going on right now.

- Let's talk about corn now.

- Well, if you look at corn, corn, you had a flat as you came in through September into October.

Had a little rally or a uptrend as we get into about mid December, peaked out somewhere around $6, and then we backed off just a little bit.

But corn's got a sideways pattern.

The market right now is semi-bullish for the corn, but it's mostly sideways movement.

- And how about soybeans?

- Soybeans is a different story altogether.

It was just flat from September starting of harvest through November.

Got into December one and soybeans took off like a scalded dog.

It went up from around $12 to up to 13.50.

It's backed off just a little bit, but with what's going on in south America with the dryness and the reducing those soybean yields in Brazil, we're getting a little, maybe a little rally in soybeans.

But right now, we've got it up into that $13 level and it seems to be holding that.

- And last but not least, cotton.

- Oh cotton, we had cotton up and we was excited when it was at $7, I mean $1.07, and then it got up to $1.16, backed off, backed down, and it goes up to almost $1.20.

Cotton is just high priced and that's a good thing for our cotton producers.

- It sure is.

Alrighty, Kim, thanks a lot.

We'll see you next week.

(country music) - Hello, I'm Dr. Rosslyn Biggs with Oklahoma State University Cooperative Extension and College of Veterinary Medicine.

When we talk about our vaccines, we really wanna think about from the start of purchase, how we're gonna handle those and how we're gonna administer those all the way to the point we have them in the calf.

So at the time of purchase, it's really key to make sure you're buying from a good distributor.

We also want to take care of those vaccines all the way through.

One thing that that works well is to make sure that you have a cooler, even at the point you're purchasing vaccines to transport those to the house.

For our refrigerators that are gonna keep these vaccines, we wanna make sure we keep them between 35 degrees and 45 degrees.

One thing that is helpful is to have a vaccine thermometer that can be used not only in that refrigerator at home or in the barn, but also in your vaccine coolers on site, the day of processing.

For our vaccines themselves, we've got some differences between products and so we always to read the label and consult your veterinarian with the appropriate products for your specific animals or groups of animals that you may be processing.

As we get prepared for processing day, we need to think about syringes and needle selections.

If you're gonna use a multi-use syringe, it's ideal to have these that are color coded so that you know you always use one product in the black syringe, and you always use one product in the yellow syringes.

You want to make sure on those multi-use syringes that you are cleaning those regularly after use so that they're ready to go for the next time of processing.

And you do not want to have disinfectants inside those syringes because they will inactivate your vaccines.

I particularly like to use in small groups of cattle, disposable syringes, Disposable syringes will come in multiple sizes so that will help when we're selecting different vaccines that may have a different dosage.

Again, we always want to read the label and consult with your veterinarian on which vaccines are appropriate.

Another handy trick, if you're gonna use disposable syringes is to use some tape.

You can color code those syringes to make sure that we're always picking up the blue syringe if we're giving a clostridial vaccine or are always picking up the yellow syringe, if we're giving a respiratory vaccine.

When it comes to needle selection, it's important that we keep in mind the smaller the gauge of the needle, the larger the diameter of the needle.

For most of our products like vaccines, we're gonna use a small gauge.

For thicker products, it'll have a thicker viscosity such as antibiotics, we're going to use a larger gauge needle.

So for instance, if I'm going to use antibiotics, I'm gonna pick, in most cases, a 16-gauge needle to administer that particular product.

It's important to not only pick the appropriate gauge, but also to prick the appropriate length of needle for the group of cattle and the product that we're using.

You wanna be cautious, too.

Even though most of our colors stay consistent with our needles, - There are some variability between manufacturers.

And so, make sure you put some eyes on the labels of those needles to make sure you're actually picking the one you think you are.

When it comes to modified live vaccines, we need to choose a dosage in a bottle that's gonna be appropriate for our processing conditions.

So in particular, the number of cattle that we are going to be able to process in an hour because once we mix a bottle, we need to be able to use that in an hour.

And so, in many cases, it may be more cost-effective and more beneficial to make sure that we have good vaccine going into those cattle to choose multiple small bottles rather than one large one.

(cows mooing) Now, for the modified live vaccines, we're gonna have to mix those.

They're gonna come with, in most cases, a sterile diluent that needs to be mixed with a dry cake.

So for that, we're gonna use, a transfer needle works best.

It's always important, any time we're entering a vaccine bottle, regardless of whether that's a modified live or a killed vaccine, that we're always using a brand new needle that's going into that bottle so we don't contaminate the vaccine.

For these modified lives, on these transfers, you wanna use that one end of the transfer needle into the sterile diluent, and then you put the other side of the transfer needle into the cake.

And I'm gonna slowly rock to mix.

And then I'm going to take my Sharpie, and I'm gonna write what time I mixed that 'cause I need to use this within an hour, and I wanna make sure that we've got good vaccine going into those cattle.

The serial numbers are also important.

I wanna make sure I'm using in-date vaccine, and an easy way to record serial numbers that I like is to just take a picture of those in close so that I have the date I administered those vaccines and the serial numbers associated with that vaccine.

And then, I can move that over to my either electronic or paper records when I get to the house.

As a reminder, you wanna make sure that you're using this modified live within an hour of mixing.

You also wanna keep it cool while you're onsite processing.

So our vaccine coolers are gonna do a good job of that.

You can use some ice packs in there, keep them cool all day.

I like this one in particular for these pistol grip syringes because they slide right in here.

We also have a good example if you're looking to make a vaccine cooler.

We have an Oklahoma State fact sheet on that.

When administering injections, with very rare exception, we're gonna administer both antibiotics, vaccines, and other medications.

Again, always according to label instructions and always at the direction of your veterinarian.

The site we're gonna use in most cases is going to be in the neck.

We've drawn a triangle on this cow for our injection area that we can use to administer those.

We're gonna administer them underneath the skin or subcutaneously.

(upbeat music) In summary, make sure you're reading labels and following instructions as advised by your veterinarian.

Needle and syringe sizes should be selected so that they're appropriate to the animal and the medication being delivered.

Be sure you're taking care of your medications, in particular vaccines.

Vaccines should be stored at 35 to 45 degrees from the time of purchase to administration.

Always use a new needle when drawing up vaccine to avoid contamination.

Make sure you're properly mixing modified live vaccine and using in a timely fashion.

Keep records of all medications given.

In particular for vaccines, your records should include the contents, expiration, and serial numbers.

It's important with BQA guidelines that we administer all medications as directed.

For the vast majority of injections, we're gonna be administering those in the neck in front of the slope of the shoulder.

Be sure if you have questions to consult your veterinarian and reference your BQA guidelines.

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

Remember, you can see us any time on our website, 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) (gentle guitar strumming)