(lighthearted guitar music) - Hello everyone and welcome to SUNUP.

I'm Lyndall Stout.

Flash drought continues to expand across Oklahoma, creating a number of challenges for livestock producers, including toxins in forage.

Here's SUNUP's, Kurtis Hair, with more.

- [Kurtis Hair] A light haze of dust in the air, cracks in the red earth and waves of unrelenting heat are familiar sites for Noble County producer, Randy Shiever.

- [Randy Shiever] We had this drought back in 10, 11, and 12 and it sort of prepared us, for what we're going through right now.

We completely ran out of forge in our pastures, back then, 10 years ago.

- [Kurtis Hair] This year, timely May rains, after months of drought, helped Randy establish a good stand of forge sorghums or haygrazer.

But just when the field was ready to be cut, the flash drought and the extreme Oklahoma heat set in.

- [Randy Shiever] I was talking to my neighbor, Dennis, and and he had planted haygrazer.

I said, Dennis, I'm gonna cut mine.

He said, boy, you better look at those light spots out there.

He said, I lost two cows by unrolling a bale of haygrazer.

Go back the next day and they're laying there dead, just like anaplasmosis.

- [Kurtis Hair] In drought stress plants, such as forage and johnson grass, nitrates can be an issue.

Prussic acid can also occur.

Thinking his field might be like his neighbors, Randy contacted, OSU Extension Beef Cattle Specialist, Dave Lalman and Pawnee and Osage Ag Educator, Rick Clovis, just to make sure.

- [Rick Clovis] Typically, we get this call and the producers are getting ready to bail the hay.

And so we would prefer to take the test while from, from recently cut plants or you know, just cut 'em and then test them and we'd strip the leaves off, split the stem, put the reagent on it and see what the reaction is.

So, this is a diphenylamine reagent, an acid and it's very toxic, so, it's not available to everybody.

You need to go through your Extension office, to be able to do this test.

If nitrates are present, it's gonna show a blue to purple color change in the stem, wherever we drop the reagent.

- [Dave Lalman] The nice thing about the quick test, if you get a negative answer, in other words, it does not react to the reagent, there's low chance of getting a false negative.

And what that, what that means, is that, if you send it in to get the quantitative test, it's probably gonna be really low.

- [Kurtis Hair] If the quick test is positive for nitrates, it doesn't mean that the forage is now useless.

- [Dave Lalman] If it does react with the quick test, it's just a real consistent signal, that you need to send it in to the SWFAL laboratory, here in the Division of Agriculture.

That test only costs $6 per sample.

We recommend people go ahead and bale the hay.

Take one or two cores from each bale, out of about 20 bales scattered throughout the field.

Mix it up in a bucket real good and send a sample.

- [Kurtis Hair] A few weeks ago, a number of producers lost cattle to prussic acid.

And although, prussic acid and nitrates are both harmful and even fatal for livestock, prussic acid will eventually go away, once the plants are cut.

But for nitrates, it's nowhere near that simple.

- [Dave Lalman] Once it's cut, generally speaking, in a hay crop, it's there.

Now you know, one way, that maybe an option for a few producers, is to put it up as silage.

Because the fermentation process in a silo, reduces the nitrate concentration by somewhere around, 30, 20, 30, even up to 50%.

- [Kurtis Hair] The quick test, did show presence of nitrates in plants, from one of Randy's other fields.

And for this hay here, it's looking like he'll have some forage for his cows this winter.

Though, he's still planning to test once it's baled, just to make sure.

- [Randy Shiever] What that means for me, I don't wake up at night about this much hay that I need.

I think it's gonna be okay.

So many people don't have the option.

I'm very fortunate to have a little bit of land.

That it was fallow here, that I could plant this.

Most cattlemen, don't have that opportunity.

When they're out, they're out.

If there's none for sale, or if you have to drive so far, with the prices of everything, you might as well load your cattle up.

Mother Nature.

I guess my final statement.

Mother Nature's always in charge.

- [Kurtis Hair] And we are all at her mercy, in this hot Oklahoma summer.

In Noble County, I'm Kurtis Hair (lighthearted guitar music) - Continuing on the topic of drought, we're joined now by, Dr. Alex Rocateli.

And Alex, you and the team are getting questions from producers about whether they can use corn as forage, given some of the challenges we're seeing this summer.

- Right.

Unfortunately, some producers this year, will not harvest grain from corn.

And they are looking at that standing plant and say, can I use that as a forage?

And the answer is, yes.

- Okay.

But of course, with some consideration, there's a lot of things to keep in mind.

Let's um, let's start with nitrate toxicity.

That's what we've been talking about this week on SUNUP.

- Right the main issue is exactly the nitrate as we have observed in Sudan.

But even before talking about nitrates, something that the producers must have in mind is, well if they were going for grain production, for sure, they fertilize it better, and this can even stimulate the plant to absorb more nitrates.

And they may have applied herbicides and also pesticides.

And that is something that they need to be aware.

Are those chemicals, look at the label and see if there is a grazing restriction or haying restriction according to what you had applied.

Make sure that you don't have any restrictions on.

- So that's step one and then what do we need to do next?

- So next, I would say sample and send to analysis for nitrate concentrations.

And I believe that the best person to help is the county educator in each county that we have.

They can help the producer to sample properly, to analyze it, and to interpret the results.

- So once the test results are back then you can explore your options depending on what those results showed.

- Exactly, you can explore your options.

And actually, the producers can graze the corn.

But the problem when grazing is do not turn hungry cattle straight to a corn, a drought-stressed corn, that you had suspicions that there is not nitrate.

First, if possible, let the cattle eat some good hay that has no toxicity and then you can introduce.

And also when talking about grazing, don't over-graze.

When you see that you are reaching close to 15 inches down in the bottom that's where most of the toxicity is in the stock.

So take the cattle right away when you are reaching like 12 to 15 inches of height left in the field.

- Another option we talked about is green chop.

How about that?

What kind of guidance do you have?

- Yes green chop is a little tricky.

You can go there, cut it and give right away to the animal.

However, when green chop, again it's very important, keep a cut to the plant around 10 to 15 inches high and always chop it an amount that the animal will eat in the next two hours.

- How about haying?

Are you also getting questions from producers who wanna cut hay from their corn?

- Yes, because hay is pretty much very common here.

Hay, you can also do it, but it's very important again and I'll repeat always, keep that 15 cutting height to leave most of the toxicity in the field.

- And are there some of those same concerns with silage?

- Well, silage in my opinion is the best option but it's important that you make a good silage where the complete fermentation happens.

Wait at least three weeks because that's the time that's necessary for a good fermentation.

- And there's also an extension fact sheet that covers some of this.

- Oh yes there is a fact sheet that goes pretty much more in details on nitrate toxicity.

- Okay, Alex, thanks a lot.

- Thank you.

- I'm sure we'll see you again very soon.

And for a link to that extension fact sheet, as well as a way to find your local county office, go to sunup.okstate.edu.

(upbeat country music) - Good morning, everyone.

Wesley is off this week, so I'm flying solo and of course we're gonna start with the drought monitor.

So let's get right to that new map and see where we are.

Well quite a turn of events over the last couple of weeks with the flash droughts starting to run rampant through the State.

We now have basically the entire State in moderate drought to severe drought to extreme drought, to exceptional drought.

The only small, tiny area of abnormally dry conditions left in the State is up in far Northern Woods and Alfalfa Counties.

So the entire State in drought virtually and I'm afraid it's going to stay that way until we get decent rainfall.

Now we have seen some of those areas intensify a little bit more rapidly, such as down in Southwest Oklahoma and South Central Oklahoma where we're hearing very bad reports of low farm ponds, dry farm ponds, and lots of cattle sales, unfortunately.

We can show this on the drought monitor change map for one week, we see all that yellow.

That's a one category degradation across the State.

Basically the entire, let's just call it everything but the Northwestern quarter of the State, up one category in drought.

So again, reflective of that flash drought situation.

We're going on just about 40 days for this current dry spell, right after June 10th.

In fact, June 11th we can pinpoint it pretty accurately.

Now some of the areas of the State are a little bit higher than that but when we look at the consecutive days with less than a quarter inch of rainfall map from the Mesonet, it shows up pretty well exactly where those areas that have gotten rain are and where they haven't gotten rain are.

And I can show you the rainfall map from the Mesonet for that time period, starting on June 11th forward.

We can see that Northwestern quarter of the State not doing too bad.

At least it's a little bit on the green side there, at least on the rainfall map, but most of the rest of the State, basically the Southeastern, let's call it three quarters of the State in really bad shape.

Just a little bit of smattering of decent rainfall here or there.

And that's had a major impact on our soil moisture as Wesley has shown you over the last few weeks.

We take a look at this 16 inch plant available soil moisture.

Most areas less than 25% plant available water, so.

- Really bad shape.

And this is also indicative of danger areas for the large wildfires.

We've seen that large wildfire up in Blaine County, other areas are starting to see more fires.

That lack of soil moisture at that level makes those areas prone to large wildfires, unfortunately.

I don't really need to tell you that it's been hot because you're living it, and so am I.

But we can look at this map, this graph from the Oklahoma Mesonet.

This is the long-term average on the black line, that's 2007 to 2021 for the high temperatures.

The red line is what we've seen, the statewide average so far in 2022.

We can see lots of up and downs, so we're well above normal, or well above that long-term average.

Over 100 degrees statewide average on those temperatures for the last couple of days.

And that's what's done all the damage on the drought monitor.

But not so fast, we do have the little bit of a chance of some hope coming forward.

We see this six to 10-day precipitation outlook from the Climate Prediction Center.

We do see that above-normal chance, at least tilted to the above-normal chances from the Climate Prediction Center showing possibly above-normal rainfall for the state of Oklahoma.

At least for that northern half, the odds are a little bit less down in the the southern half and over across parts of far eastern Oklahoma.

But they are elevated nonetheless, so that would certainly be welcome.

We know the pattern has to change eventually.

Hopefully this upcoming chance of above-normal precipitation is the beginning of that.

That's it for this time.

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

(upbeat western music) - Well, it's been a few weeks with wheat prices keep tumbling down.

So Kim, have they found a bottom?

- Well, let's go back to that chart we've been looking at the last couple weeks, and concentrate on since harvest started.

Prices were around $11, they went down to $7.98 in northern Oklahoma, they're back up to around $5.30.

But you look back over the last couple weeks at both the future prices and the cash prices, I think they've found a bottom, at least temporarily.

I can't see 'em going much lower.

You look at that Kansas City December contract.

Since mid-June, we've seen that contract go from $8.50 to $9.50, trading in that area.

You look at the basis, minus $1 down in southern Oklahoma, minus $.70 on Weatherford, around that area.

And $.40 to $.50 under as you get into northern Oklahoma.

So, both the futures and the cash looks like they've found a bottom.

- So last week the news was Russia driving a lot of this, but what's the news this week?

- Well, there's been a lot of talk about the dollar and the dollars impacted over the last several months.

You look at, go back to February, it's around 97% on that dollar index.

At March up to 104%, July up to 108%.

The average, if you go back over 10, 15 years is around 80% to 85%, something like that.

So, that dollar is extremely high.

You had Egypt in the market this week, they tendered.

They tentatively bought U.S. wheat and then they canceled that purchase.

You got a lot of talk about the European union wheat production there, they keep lowering that just a little bit.

And then you've always got that Russian-Ukraine fiasco.

I think the market right now is betting that Russian and Ukraine will come to some agreement with the United States and the other countries about sanctions, and we'll get that wheat out on the market.

- So what do you thinks gonna happen with wheat prices?

- Well, you look at what the USDA's predicting for an average annual price, $10.50.

Now I'd say the U.S. average price is, oh, maybe around $9 at the best.

You look at what's been goin' on in the last week.

I'd said that the prices would be between $9 and $10 as we got out in the year.

This week, I'm not so sure of that.

The Russian-Ukraine situation, it looks like they're coming to an agreement there.

I think the market's betting on that and I think that's why prices are low.

And if we come to that agreement, that's gonna put a lot of wheat out on the market.

So, I'd say if you look at what's going on the market, I do think we have a bottom.

But I don't think any way we're gonna get to that $10.50 and we maybe not get to the $9, but that's probably where I think it's going.

- Quickly before we let you go, what about corn and beans?

- Well, if you look at corn, same thing's been happening to corn, beans, and cotton.

It's been going down.

You go back to mid-June, corn was $7 on the futures, down to $5.90, up just a little bit.

That basis has been a steady minus $.25.

Soybeans, $15.60 to $13.40, $2.20 down, minus $.75 basis.

Cotton, $120 down to $90, took $30 off that cotton price.

So prices have been coming down.

I think it's all this news, what's goin' on in Russia and Ukraine, and then that high value of the dollar.

- All righty.

Thanks, Kim.

Kim Anderson, grain marketing specialist here at Oklahoma State University.

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

Well, to summarize the past year's weather, we've had long-term drought, we had good moisture in the month of May, we've had intense heat for the past few weeks with prevailing southern winds, and we find ourself in a flash drought.

If you're a cow-calf operation and you look around in your pastures right now and it looks like your forage base is a little depleted, it leads us to this week's topic about the potential benefits of early weaning calves.

Now, if we look around the United States and think about tradition and what's typical, we wean calves at a little over seven months of age.

If we're turning in information performance data on registered herds, we know our adjusted weaning weights are adjusted to a standard 205 days of age.

We've got plenty of evidence that shows us that we can wean calves as young as two months of age, but calves that are weaned at two months of age are gonna require some intensive management.

They are effectively a pre-ruminant at that point.

- Primarily dependent upon mother's milk, they're capable of pretty efficiently digesting a grain based diet that's nutrient dense, but their rumen's not really working, they're eating a pretty limited amount of forage.

Typically calves by three to four months of age have got a functional rumen, they're eating a much larger quantity of forage.

Particularly as we look at that age calves is where we gain some potential benefits from early weaning.

What is our primary thing that we gain from early weaning calves?

We're gonna reduce that cow's energy needs by about 15 to 20%.

In doing so, we're gonna permit her to regain some body condition, potentially breed back quicker and sooner.

The long term benefits of that, if we early wean, that cow recapturing flesh is potentially more productive and has heavier weaning weight calves in future years.

The other long term benefit that we can think of from a range management standpoint, if we early wean, we prevent overgrazing of pastures and our whole range system benefits from that.

So what are some of the measures we need to take if we want to early wean calves?

Well, we need to get calves eating a concentrate diet as soon as possible.

If we can, we'd like to get a creep feeding program, potentially started two to three weeks before we wean.

If we can't get that done, at the very least, we want a highly palatable nutrient-dense, dust-free, high energy ration that's got 14 to 16% crude protein in it.

We know as calves deal with the stress of being weaned, initially, they're gonna eat a limited amount of that and we need it to be as nutrient-dense and palatable as possible.

We want to, if possible, make sure that the calves know where water, shade are in familiar surroundings.

If fence line weaning is a possibility, that's a good idea as well.

Once those calves get through the first couple weeks of the stress of early weaning, they're gonna probably bump up and eat around 3% of their body weight of some sort of a good ration.

So if we see 'em deviate off that long term, we're potentially dealing with health issues that we need to address.

Other things to keep in mind, if we can have all of our vaccinations taken care of pre-weaning while that calf is still at the side of a cow, practices like dehorning and castration taken care of when we give those pre-weaning vaccinations, we're gonna reduce the stress on those calves at the time that they actually undergo weaning.

So as we look around, if forage is a little short, the benefits of early weaning calves potentially help us short term and long term.

Take some of these best management practices into consideration if you're gonna do it, and thanks for joining us on "Cow-Calf Corner."

(cheerful music) - With us today is OSU livestock marketing specialist, Derrell Peel.

Derrell, we're obviously in the mid-summer doldrums.

So what's going on with the cattle market right now?

- Well, obviously it's a heat of summer and drought conditions are expanding rapidly again in Oklahoma.

As far as cattle markets go, you know, feeder cattle markets are actually showing some strength right now.

The heavier weight feeder cattle normally go up this time of the year and they certainly are doing that.

But even the calves, which typically are kind of going down this time of year are actually showing a little bit of strength.

Fed cattle markets are kinda moving sideways, but again, not showing kinda the summer weakness that we normally expect.

- How is beef demand holding up as consumers face, you know, talks of inflation and inflated prices?

- You know, beef prices are high and we've been looking for sort of limitations in that, if you will.

Retail beef prices haven't changed very much the last few months, they've been kinda flat.

I think they're kinda capped at this point.

Beef is the most expensive meat.

Pork and poultry prices have continued to climb.

So that's probably actually helping to support beef at the level it's at.

It's not dropping, but it's not going higher at this point in time.

- Obviously, it's been really hot, there's been talks about, you know, pastures being dry, there's talks about hay shortages this winter.

So as we talk about these drought conditions, what are cattle producers facing right now?

- Well, you know, again, we had, you know, we were very dry back in the early spring in March, then we got some rain, we got a little bit of growth, probably one cutting of hay, but it looks like at this point that maybe that's about all we're gonna get.

So I think at this point in time, producers have to face the reality that we may have to sort of figure out how to get not only through the rest of the summer, but really all the way through to next winter as well.

And so I think there's a lot of challenges going on.

We've been seeing in general a lot of continued liquidation, still cow slaughters is elevated.

And so, you know, those challenges are gonna continue here in the coming weeks.

- So what can we expect to see in the cattle markets?

- You know, there's a couple things going on.

One will be obviously these drought conditions.

Drought has forced more females into the market.

Both cow and heifer slaughter is elevated.

We don't know how far that's gonna get pushed, that in the short run.

- That's keeping beef production a little bit higher, it's keeping cattle slaughter a little bit higher, but and feed lots are full right now in part because of that but we're gonna turn the corner here.

Cattle numbers are getting tighter in the country.

I think that's what's helping the feeder cattle markets but we haven't quite got the feed lots caught up with them.

So we don't really have everything quite on the same page yet.

As we go forward, that should happen.

We'll see these feed lot numbers start to come down and then we'll be kind of more in line with tighter cattle supplies going forward.

- Thank you, Darrell, and we'll be sure to keep an eye on those markets.

- Finally, today, important information about managing heat stress in cattle.

Here's Sun Ups Curtis Hare and extension beef cattle specialist, Dr. Paul Beck with some guidance.

- Yeah, these cattle are out in the elements most of the time, if not all of the time and when we have really high temperatures along with this humidity, it gets really rough on them.

Their natural comfort zone goes up to about 77 degrees Fahrenheit but when you start putting the the humidity in with that, and we express this as temperature humidity index.

If we start getting up to about 74 as a THI, we start getting into where we need to start being worried.

When we get up higher than that to around 79, that's really where we need to start being very careful to limit our activities and if we get up to 84 THI, then we really need to pull back and make sure those cattle have some cool water, some shade, you know, get some relief from that.

Along with our humidity and the discomfort we have during the day, if we have temperatures that don't go below 70 degrees at night, those cattle can't give off their excess heat load from the day into the environment and that just increases the whole problem.

So they're carrying heat load over.

This morning, it was 80 degrees with about 80% humidity.

So we had, we were already in an extreme or an alert temperature humidity index and that was first thing this morning.

- What's some of the implications for heat stress in cattle, like what what can really affect their performance?

- Well, whenever we start getting into mild heat stress, where we just see those cattle panting, they're already going to decrease their feed intake.

When a cow, or a calf, or a feed lot animal eats feed, they're fermenting that in their rumen and that creates heat load as well.

So to decrease that heat load, they're gonna start decreasing feed and forage intake.

As it gets higher, they're going to start drinking more water, and decreasing activity, spending more time in the shade, more time standing in water, and then they'll start actively panting.

If you see them open mouth breathing with their tongue sticking out, they're in extreme heat stress.

- You mentioned briefly a little bit about having access to cool water and maybe even a pond but is there any other management strategies that producers can take to kind of limit that stress?

- If cattle don't have natural shade, you need to find a way to supply some artificial shade structures.

Other things is, don't work cattle, or transport cattle, or process cattle in unless you just really have to.

- All right, thanks Paul.

Paul Beck, extension beef specialist, here at Oklahoma State University and if you'd like a link to more information that he talked about, go to our website, sunup.okstate.edu.

- That'll do it for us this week.

Remember you can see SunUp anytime on our website and also follow us on YouTube and social media.

- [Lyndall] We leave you today with highlights from the big three field days, held this week on the OSU campus in Stillwater.

I'm Lyndall Stout and we'll see you next time at SunUp.

(country music)