- Good morning everyone.

We have a great show lined up for you today on Sunup on the heels of the winter storm that blanketed Oklahoma and much of the country.

We learn what it takes to manage a cattle herd in extreme cold.

Continuing on the winter and cattle theme, we'll discuss winter plans for successful spring calving.

And our state climatologist, Gary McManus, is running all the Mesonet numbers from the winter storm.

Grab that hot cup of coffee because sun up starts right now.

Hello everyone and welcome to sunup.

I'm Linde Stout.

The recent winter storm brought bitter cold temperatures, plenty of snow, even some ice to our state.

And with February arriving, we're certainly not out of the woods yet.

So today we wanna take a second look at a popular segment featuring Dr.

Paul Beck talking about the best ways to manage your livestock through all of this.

- Right now we've got, you know, we're at 15 degrees.

We've been below freezing for, for several days.

You know, a cow in, in good condition like these cows with a thick hair coat, you know, they're good down to about 32 degrees is their lower critical temperature.

When we get below that, we're gonna have to start making some, some, make some changes to, to help them handle that extra cold.

When we're down below that, it's about 1% increase in energy requirements for every degree below their lower critical temperature.

So if we've got a thin cow with a, with a thinner hair coat, you know, their lower critical temperature's gonna be up 40.

So as we get down close to zero for the temperature, you know, they're gonna be about 40% below their requirements.

If we don't have a wind break or something to keep that windchill from working on them, we're gonna be 15% higher than that.

So we're looking at 50 to 60% increase in nutrient requirements or energy requirements for them to handle that cold, increase their supplementation, increase the quality of hay, you know, we're gonna start losing body condition over this period of time.

If we could feed some high quality hay close to where they're going to want to be like in this, this protected area, you know, they may actually increase their hay intake by about, you know, 20 to 50%.

So it's really important to, you know, get these cattle some cover windbreaks.

If we don't have, you know, some trees or, or, or, or geographic features, you know, we can build a quick and easy windbreak just by putting a, a, some, a row of, of low quality hay and leave it in the round bale there and just let 'em have it, you know, and, and we spend a lot of time talking about reducing hay waste, this type of weather.

We don't wanna worry about reducing hay waste.

Let's, you know, put some hay out on the ground, let 'em spread around.

If they do have calves, those calves can get in cover and, and, and get up under that hay to, to get out of the elements.

- And you know, it, it, the past week, it has been a negative 35 degree wind chill in some parts of the state.

So that's obviously gonna affect the water.

It water's gonna freeze over.

So, you know, a lot of producers know what to do, but for those producers out there that are really kind of struggling, like, you know, how do I like get, you know, have water available to their cattle, what, what do they need to do?

- So if we've got, you know, the best case scenario would be a, you know, a freeze proof tank with, with groundwater coming in, it's gonna be warmer water.

They'll actually go and they'll increase water intake when it's warmer than the outside temperatures.

But if we're cutting ice on a pond, you know, we're going to decrease water intake.

But if they don't have any water available, you know where that's tied to.

You know, water intake is tied to milk production intake of, of hay and, and supplements and fermentation.

So they've gotta have water in their rumen and, and water available to, you know, utilize the forage that we're trying to feed them.

So it, it's important to have water available.

You know, a lot of times when temperatures are this cold, we can chop ice on the pond, you know, and, and get some cattle to come and drink, but then within an hour or so it's gonna be frozen back.

So you may have to go out and chop ice a a couple of times during the day or at least every day to get cattle to where they can get water and and consuming - Alrightyy.

Thanks Paul.

Paul Beck extension beef cattle specialist here at Oklahoma State University.

- 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.

- Good morning everyone.

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

Just wanna do a quick check in from a very, very frozen but sunny Norman, Oklahoma.

Taking a look at these snowfall totals that we received throughout the, the weekend.

You can see from the maps from the National Weather Service Offices that cover Oklahoma, that we had a good four to eight to even as many as 14 inches across the state.

That's mostly snow.

Now down in south eastern Oklahoma and south central Oklahoma, we did have a lot of sleet.

Sayer led the state with 14 inches of snow, which is an incredible total.

Now when we look at the Fort Towson area, it had six inches of sleet and Poto had five inches of sleet.

So I know it's very annoying to have this really cold air.

We did have record cold temperatures throughout the weekend, even into early this week, but it does mean moisture for the state.

When you melt down six inches of sleet, that's really good moisture.

Also, 14 inches of snow is not too shabby either.

So it is the best moisture we've seen in the state really since about mid-November for those portions of northwestern Southwestern over in southeastern Oklahoma.

Now when we take a look at the Meine, that rainfall map, we're still waiting for it to all melt.

So it's a little bit preliminary, but where you see those greens, that's at least an inch of rainfall melted down snow or sleet.

Obviously we do have as many as up to three inches down in southeast Oklahoma where they got all that sleet.

When we go up into the north central area, we also had about an inch.

In some areas we get in those blues, it's a lot of half inch to three quarter of an inch liquid equivalent rainfall from that melted snow and, and sleet and freezing rain.

So again, it is just really good moisture.

The first really good moisture we've seen in almost two months in some cases, and in other cases it lasts even three to four months.

So we do love this moisture.

It is sitting on the ground melting in quite nicely.

Don't get a lot of the sublimation or evaporation straight to the cold air.

So as we melt that in, it should alleviate some of those soil moisture deficits as well.

If we look forward, even if we do don't get reinforcing rainfall or snowfall, we at least interrupted the drought and its severity just a little bit here late January.

Now we look forward to February, hopefully some more moisture and more drought relief in store for the state.

That's it for this time.

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

- We are joined now by Dr.

Daryl Peele, our OSU extension livestock marketing specialist, and Darrell still snow on ground widespread winter weather across Oklahoma.

How have cattle operations been affected?

- Yeah, you know, for our producers in Oklahoma, this, these kind of conditions create a number of management headaches for 'em.

We don't get this kinda weather all that often and it doesn't usually last very long.

So, you know, producers have had a lot of additional efforts to, you know, to put out additional feed for cattle.

Probably one of the biggest challenges is, is making sure they have water.

So a lot of chopping ice and so on.

A few of our producers are already in calving season, so that was a particular concern given the, the subfreezing temperatures we've had for several days that, you know, they've had to put a lot of extra effort in to, to take, make sure those calves get off to a, a good start.

- Lots of things to think about.

And do farmers and ranchers certainly really busy with their livestock.

Talk about any market effects that you have seen during this time.

- Well, there are several things we might see going forward.

It'll take a little time to know exactly where we're at.

You know, as far as those newborn baby calves, depending on whether there were losses of those, this, this storm was covered such a wide part of the country that, you know, there's a chance that we lost enough calves that would, that would impact, you know, obviously the size of the calf crop later in the year or the, the number of calves that we wean.

So that could be a potential impact.

I doubt if it's that big, but it's possible the more immediate impact that we will see sooner will be in feedlot cattle.

This kind of cold weather cattle will, you know, their, their per their performance will drop, it'll take them longer to finish and yeah, we'll probably see some decrease in carcass weights relative to what we would've been.

So there'll be a li a little bit of impact on, on beef production going forward.

- How could consumers be impacted as a result of the storm?

- Well again, you know, all of the travel delays we had may actually impact demand from a negative standpoint.

People weren't out and about as much, you know, lots of, lots less travel.

So that would be a short term negative impact.

Longer term, again, if we interrupt beef production or the flow of beef through supply chains, we could see some disruptions that that consumers will notice in the coming weeks.

- Switching gears, and last but not least, the cattle feed report.

What do the latest numbers show?

- The January catalog feed report showed, you know, a January one feedlot inventory that was down 3.2% from a year ago.

So we're starting to see that feedlot inventory decline a little more rapidly than we have for many months.

Placements in December were, were down 5.4% marketings in December.

Were actually about 1.8% above a year earlier.

So a little bit bigger there.

I think some of that was carried over from the fact that markets were so disrupted last, last fall.

Marketings were way down in November and some of those carried over into December for a slight increase.

So the other thing that was in this report was a quarterly breakdown of steers and heifers on feed.

So we've been monitoring that heifers on feed in particular, that percentage actually went back up again.

It's been above average now for several years and we have not seen that fall yet.

So, you know, we're that by itself would suggest that we're not seeing a lot of indications of heifer retention at this point in time.

- Alright Darrell, thanks for the information.

We'll see you again soon.

- So Oklahomans, it's finally gonna be winter here in January.

So with a cold front coming through this weekend, it's probably time to do some checklist to make sure you and your horse are properly prepared.

For those of you that are lucky enough to have indoor facilities, so probably isn't a whole lot you need to do other than making sure that water lines ca keep running dripping faucets, et cetera.

Otherwise horses that are housed inside should be pretty comfortable outside of the wind rain slash snow for horses that are housed outside.

However, probably the first priority I always have people think about when it comes to winter weather and horses is do they have shelter?

So horses' thermal neutral zone or the temperature at which they're pretty comfortable is pretty low for horses that are acclimated to the weather, however that is provided that they have a source of water.

So that's probably number two, if not tied with my top priority.

So horses always need to have access to fresh open water.

So this is the time before the winter weather gets here to check, do your bucket heaters work, do your tank heaters work?

Do you need to add a tank or a bucket heater?

If so, need to check, check that your wiring is adequate, make sure that the cords that you are using have the sufficient capacity to carry that voltage.

So super, super important that horses always have open water.

So we do wanna make sure that the horse is consuming about 10 to 12 gallons of water.

One of the big health risks that we see in winter is impas impaction colleagues.

And typically that's again, because horses don't have the ability to have that open water if it's frozen.

Also remember, horses prefer lukewarm water.

So icy cold water can actually start to limit the amount of horse drinks.

Otherwise, a lot of Oklahomans do like to blanket their horses for winter.

And so this may be a time that they're pulling out blankets and putting 'em on.

As always, blanket fit is going to be really key.

So one way that you could tell if the blanket fits adequately for the horse, the horse should be allowed or able to move freely.

So if too tight of a blanket may actually restrict the amount of motion through the horse's shoulder and the hind court of the blanket should actually literally cover the hindquarters of the horse too large of a blanket.

Again, you may see that it slips side to side or the leg fasteners are, are too long and again, can kind of pose a risk if the horses can get a leg through there.

So that's kind of the basic thing.

You wanna really make sure that they're in good repair and again, have been correctly fitted for your horse before you put them on.

Also, if we're talking about mixed weather, right, so that difference between rain and snow, that blanket that goes on, that horse has to be weatherproof or water resistant.

Otherwise, simply adding a blanket that gets wet can really be pretty negative and and pretty harmful for that horse.

Additionally, some people like to use, you know, adding additional hay or roughage to the horse's diet to maintain internal warmth or body temperature.

If we've upped the amount the horse drink or eats, we also have to make sure they have adequate water to keep everything flowing through the digestive tract.

So another consideration in winter is actually really evaluating your horse's body condition score.

Again, long hair can sometimes mask whether the horse has gained weight or lost weight.

So I really encourage owners to routinely throughout the winter, get their hands on the horse and not just leave it to a visual inspection.

Same thing if we're gonna blanket the horse and choose to have a blanket long-term through the winter, that blanket needs to come off regularly to inspect the horse again, is there any rubbing or chafing that is occurring from the blanket or if the horse has actually lost or gained weight with the blanket on.

So it's not enough to just blanket 'em and forget it.

We still have to regularly inspect that horse's condition throughout the window.

- Good morning Oklahoma and welcome to Cow-Calf Corner.

This week we address hypothermia in baby calves and in weather like this, hypothermia can be a great cause of death loss in newborn calves.

And so we kinda work through the nuts and bolts of it and think about what's normal when we might need to assist.

And if we have a calf that needs to be warmed up, how do we actually go about getting that done effectively for the long-term benefit of the calf?

On the good news side, in spite of all the weather, if we have got cows that are in good shape, think body condition score five and a half to six, those cows have been in a good plane of nutrition during the last trimester of pregnancy.

The calves born should be equipped with a layer of brown adipose tissue that serves as a rapidly mobilized energy source, which they're gonna burn used for energy and it's gonna help 'em to bounce up and nurse quickly.

And actually nursing as soon as possible after birth is one of the key things to a baby calf getting off to a good start in good weather or bad, but it particularly lowers their risk of suffering from cold stress or hypothermia.

So if we've got thinner kind of cows, or particularly we see dystocia, prolonged calving, it doesn't happen in a timely fashion.

Thinner cows, calves without as much brown adipose tissue, prolonged birth process, all are things that put calves more at risk of not being able to get up and nurse quickly.

So what is normal?

Well, when the calf is born, we could use a rectal thermometer to check temperature.

If we're concerned, normal should be somewhere between 1 0 1 0.5 and 1 0 2 0.5.

If we take that temperature and the calf is below 101, we are at potential risk of hypothermia, we may need to take some measures, at the very least, continue to monitor that calf.

We start to see temperatures below a hundred.

We probably need to intervene if we get a calf rectal temperature below 94 degrees, we've got severe cold stress, internal organs are starting to cool and we need to take some drastic measures.

So if we need to help, we need to rewarm a calf.

Let's think about two courses of action, internal and external.

Internally, if we can get warm colostrum, high fat colostrum up to 10% fat into that calf with a tube feeder, potentially a bottle, we are taking a method internally that's gonna help that calf warm up.

Not only that, but that energy is gonna be burnt to help that calf create heat internally.

So nutrition, energy, fat in the form of colostrum is gonna be really key to helping that calf warm.

Another thing, and I backtrack just a second, if we're concerned about a calf and don't have a rectal thermometer, if we put a finger or two in that calf's mouth and we don't get a suckling reflex, that is another sign the calf is at risk.

Other things that indicate it, if the calf is clumsy, erratic behavior, just listless, we know potentially these are signs of cold stress as well.

So back to internal and external, internally, get some warm colostrum in the calf.

When we say warm, typically think of it at a hundred to 102 degrees is about where we want that to be.

If we have to resort to external means, whether it is the floorboard of our truck, whether we're gonna take that calf and put 'em in a hot box, if we're gonna take 'em inside and put 'em under heat lamps, anything like that we can do in a barn, a garage, a tool shed.

If we can get that calf outta the elements and a little warmer environment, potentially even resorting to a water bath.

That water bath also is something we'd like around 101.

A hundred to 102 degrees would be ideal.

We don't want it too hot.

We might cause stress in that calf going the other way.

If we find newborn calves, and particularly with extreme cold potential moisture wetness snow on the ground, what can we do to take measures to help them?

Well, let's get 'em up off the ground if possible.

Let's set 'em on pallets.

Let's maybe get towels or blankets underneath them.

Let's do what we can to preserve heat.

They're gonna lose heat into the ground, they're potentially gonna dissipate heat.

So a little bit of cover in that respect is also gonna help fundamentally, when the calf is first firstborn, the quicker we can get them dry, whether we are drying them off with towels, whether we're using some sort of a blow dryer, getting them dry, getting them to a warm spot, monitoring that temperature, keeping an eye on 'em, and if we get the calves coming back and going the other way, if we can get that temperature of the calf back to 99 to a hundred degrees, we can potentially give it some time, maybe put it back out in the elements and monitor that calf for a few hours to make sure that they are maintaining and restoring that core temperature.

So I hope this helps.

As always, thanks for being with us on cow-calf corner.

- Finally today, the winter storm may be over, but the bitter cold temperatures could stick around for a while.

Today.

OSU extension energy management specialist, Dr.

Scott Frazier has some tips for us.

- Well, you want to concentrate on those that are gonna give you the, the best payback in terms of the, the money you've spent.

And so we don't concentrate on little things, we concentrate on big things.

And so in the home you're, that's gonna be the heating system almost entirely.

So any system that's associated with the heating system, including things that aren't part of the heating system like windows, doors, things like that.

So for instance, windows, they can, we can get a lot of air coming through the windows, especially older windows.

And so there's things you can do.

For instance, putting up sheets of plastic.

You can go to a hardware store and they'll sell little kits that you can put on and you glue it to the frames of the windows, then use a hair dryer to basically get the plastic nice, nice and tight.

There's a couple of ways to test for infiltration also, you can get an incent and stick, wait for a windy day and go around to the windows on the inside and the doors and see if the smoke blows.

Sometimes you can feel it on the back of your hand and that's, that's not a good sign.

The reason that this is important is because that infiltration will affect the thermostat sooner or later, and the thermostat is basically gonna start driving the, the heater.

So in a way, it's actually directly connected to the heater, which is the big money user in this whole scenario.

- Let's talk about the heater specifically.

Maybe some things I can do myself similar to those things, you around the house.

- Sure.

One of the things that you want to take a look at is obviously the filters.

If you don't know where the filters are, that's probably not a good sign unless somebody else is changing them for you.

And in which case that's fine, but we wanna make sure and change the filters, especially if you have pets, things like that.

You'll probably should be changing the filters every three to four months if you've got pets.

The other thing is a test that you can do with a little thermostat like a food therm thermometer, excuse me.

If I put the thermometer into a, an outlet where the warm air is coming out, I measure the temperature and then I go find the return vent, which is usually a larger vent where the air is going back in, I measure that temperature and I see what the difference is.

There should be about 15 to 20 degree difference between those two should be warmer, obviously on the supply vent.

If the temperatures are almost the same, that means that heat is not getting through somehow.

And so that leads to seeing if well are the, are the filters impacted?

And if that's not the case, it might be time to call a contractor, things like that.

- That leads me to the next question.

When is it time to say, okay, I've done all I can and I need to invest some money in upgrading my system?

- Yeah, well some of it depends on the age of the system.

For instance, in my house, everything is like 30 years old.

And so I know that I'm living right on the right on the edge.

And so if I try these various things like trying to get the air infiltration down, cleaning the, getting new filters in, things like that, putting up some kind of glaze, not glazing, but film on the windows or even storm windows, something like that.

And if I'm still uncomfortable, if my bills are still high, if the, if the heater is running constantly, it's probably time to call in a contractor and if the equipment's old be ready because it may be time to switch it out.

These things are just machines.

I mean they're, they're like cars.

People expect them to run forever, but they're gonna wear out.

And so it's not the kind of news we want to get, but it's kind of inevitable.

I suppose - This is just one of many topics that you address on behalf of Extension and you have several fact sheets available?

- Yeah, we sure do.

And they're on the OSU extension fact sheet website.

You can, you can Google that, but I understand that Sunup also has links to these.

- That's right.

And we will be talking to you again in the coming weeks.

So thanks a lot Scott.

Great.

And for a link to those fact sheets, just go to sunup.OKstate.edu.

That'll do it for our show this week.

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

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

We leave you today with a few great pictures of the winter storm and activities of students on campus, having a lot of fun captured by our chief photographer, Mitchell Alcala.

I'm Lyndall Stout.

Have a great week everyone.

And remember, Oklahoma Agriculture starts at Sunup.