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

I'm Lyndall Stout.

We have a special show for you this week that focuses on caring for your livestock during the summer months.

We'll have more in just a moment, but first we're talking with Dr. Rosslyn Biggs, our OSU extension veterinarian about some new checkpoints at the Oklahoma, Texas state line.

- So we're in the middle of summer and we have lots of shows going on for our various livestock species and a variety of other travel.

It's important for animal owners to know and to remember that there are requirements for interstate movement.

Those are gonna be set by the state of destination.

In particular, we've had a reestablishment and staffing by our counterparts in Texas that are now reestablishing those livestock checkpoints at the border between Oklahoma and Texas.

And so in some states, such as this one in Texas it requires all livestock conveyances, so trailers and that includes poultry and horses as well moving in that way to stop and have, whether they're loaded or unloaded, stop and to have that checked.

So at these checkpoints they're gonna review your documentation and make sure that it's accurate.

They're gonna take a look at the descriptions of the animals making sure animal identification is present, making sure that testing is done if it is required, making sure that compares to the animal in the shipment.

Additionally, we wanna make sure that we have accurate documentation because test dates that aren't valid that's gonna create a problem for our producers.

Particularly if you are transporting animals you need to be prepared with generally a certificate of veterinary inspection and associated testing.

There may be, in some cases vaccinations that are required.

And so we want to encourage animal owners to work cooperatively with their veterinarian and plan well in advance because in many cases we may have to have a permit, for instance to go with our certificate of veterinary inspection, which is commonly called a health certificate.

We can't always get those permits on the weekends.

So spur of the moment type travel can be challenging.

So we wanna prepare in advance.

We wanna work with our veterinarian to get these CBIs or health certificates ready to go.

We also have to coordinate at times with laboratory testing schedules.

So we want to have some lead time to make sure our entry requirements are met.

For producers and veterinarians wanting to check to see what the requirements are, they need to contact the state animal health official's office in the state of destination and figure those out.

Many are published online on websites.

We do give a bit of caution with our websites though is in the event of a disease outbreak in particular those requirements can change.

So it's always a good idea to pick up the phone and talk to somebody in person or get a recent email within the couple of days before you're gonna have those documents prepared, and then you can have the most recent requirements to make sure that you have a safe and effective travel into your state of destination.

For more information, be sure to visit the Sunup website.

(upbeat country music) - I'm Kim Anderson and this is "Tailgate Talk on Market Monitor".

We've completed the first month of the 2023/24 week marketing year and I think there's some lessons to be learned from wheat price patterns from January through May and for the month of June.

If you go back to January, wheat prices were between $7.50 and $8, moved up to around that $8.40 level.

We saw quite a bit of volatility in the first six months.

The average price was $7.85.

A single day price move up or down was plus or minus 45 cents.

And the average daily price move was 12 cents.

A lot of volatility in the market.

A farmer told me, talking about these prices that a price above $8 would be a relatively good price and I agree with him on that.

If you'll look at the June prices, we came into the June, the 2023 Oklahoma wheat harvest with wheat prices around $7.50 to $7.75.

They came down to the $7.40 level and then we had prices going back up in mid-June.

That farmer had about eight trading days to sell his wheat above $8.

It peaked out at $8.15.

The average price for the month of June has been $7.67 and the low price of where we ended the month was back down around $7.35.

The first couple days in July we've gained some price moves back.

The lessons to be learned about that is we had.... - Up or down moves.

The highest up move was 38 cents.

Greatest down move was 37 cents.

What does this tell you about how to sell your wheat?

It tells you that with this price variability, we need to stagger that wheat in the market.

Be like that farmer.

He established an acceptable price at $8.

I think that was a little risky.

I might have set it down around that expected average price of 7.75.

Remember, the average June price was 7.67.

So what's an acceptable price for your wheat that's in the bin, going out in into the July time period?

Write that plan down and follow it.

Set some dates and our prices for which you're gonna pull the trigger.

Write it down, and when you hit those dates, or those prices, sell that wheat.

Have the discipline to follow that written plan.

The market has provided information that'll help you sell your wheat.

Pay attention to it.

Make a plan, set it down.

We'll talk more about the wheat marketing strategies next week on Market Monitor.

(cheerful guitar music) - Thank goodness there's been a break in the extreme temperatures we've seen, but we all know that can change quickly, especially in July and August in Oklahoma.

Today, Dr. Mark Johnson has some tips on helping your cattle avoid heat stress this summer.

(cheerful guitar music) - Good morning, Oklahoma.

Thanks for joining us on Cow Calf Corner this week.

This week's topic is heat stress.

It's kind of a timely topic relative to the weather that we've been going through in Oklahoma the past few weeks, and our forecast that we've got coming up.

And we're gonna address a little bit about what we can do to try to prevent it, and some of the indicators are when cattle are subject to it.

First of all, anytime the temperature is over 80 degrees Fahrenheit, we can potentially see heat stress occur in cattle.

The temperature, humidity index, something we can look up in a phone app, or visit websites to get a feel for, anytime that's over 80, we're at more risk of cattle suffering from heat stress, and in particular, and something that's really hit home in the past two weeks in our state, when the night temperatures are not getting below 70 degrees, it does not give cattle time to offload that heat buildup that occurs in them naturally through the day.

So what do we get into in terms of management, things we suggest as far as best management practices to try to avoid heat stress in cattle?

First, if we have to work cattle, if we're gonna be handling or sorting on cattle, we need to be doing that as early in the morning as possible.

Now that leads to the question, could we wait till nighttime, when the temperatures cool back off a little bit, and potentially work cows then?

Not as good an option as doing it in the morning, because cattle have built up heat all day long, so even as those night temperatures start to fall, cattle are still dealing with heat load at that point, which makes it a far better idea to be doing it in the morning.

Second thing, we need to provide ample amounts of clean water, cool water when possible, and even give some thought to, is there shade over automatic waters?

Is our water coming out of a source that gets an opportunity to soak up a lot of sun and warms up itself?

Because as the temperature of water goes up, we actually see water intake decrease in cattle at a time of the year when it's warm, and their water intake needs to increase for the sake of helping them cool off and offload that heat buildup.

So ample amounts of water.

Keep that water as cool and clean as possible.

Allow ample water space.

It's gonna be important to alleviate heat stress in cattle.

Couple other things, shade.

We need shade for cattle at this time of year, particularly black-hided cattle.

Airflow can be very important at helping cattle have a little bit of evaporative cooling.

Cattle mainly get rid of heat through respiration and that process.

But airflow is really critical to avoiding heat stress.

If we've got anything up from the winter when we're trying to block wind, whether we've got hay stored somewhere, or maybe even just tall forage beside areas where cattle are gonna shade up, so some basic management practices, work them early in the morning, provide ample shade, provide ample water, and do anything we can to eliminate wind breaks, so that there's some airflow through.

I suppose if given the option, cattle are gonna catch a little more airflow at higher elevation than they are down in valleys.

So if we're putting in some kind of a shaded area, give thought to where you're gonna locate it.

If you are dealing with something that is mechanical shade that you're gonna move into pastures or grazing paddocks, the orientation of it can be helpful relative to if it's in a low spot, helping that dry up so that sun hits it more time of the day.

So a north-south orientation versus an east-west is something to give consideration to.

Just some tips on heat stress, how to try to avoid it, and thanks for joining us on Cow Calf Corner, (cheerful guitar music) - A few weeks ago, we talked about the economics of the Oklahoma Gold Supplementation Program during late summer on growing cattle.

Recently I had an email from a producer in Osage County that asked the question, well, how might that supplementation program benefit my replacement heifers?

This producer felt like his heifers were behind.

- This year, and he has a fall calving program, and he intends to breed his heifers in November.

It's interesting.

Our fall-born heifers this year are lighter than they normally are this time of year also.

The other thing that's interesting to me, we bailed our native hay meadows here west of Stillwater the end of June this year, which is earlier than we're normally able to get to them, and they only tested 4.4% crude protein, and that was two different native hay meadows.

So normally those will be six to seven and a half, maybe even 8%, protein.

Perhaps that part of the reason why the cattle are a little bit behind this year.

The Oklahoma Gold Program is one pound of a 38% protein supplement that includes the feed additive ionophore for which trade names for the two most common products there are Bovatec and Rumensin.

How might that benefit a fall-born heifer during the late summer, early fall period prior to the breeding season?

Dr. Beck and I just completed a literature review on the ionophore Rumensin.

And in that literature review, we found 18 studies on that subject.

And essentially, what...

The benefit of the Rumensin product for those heifers was nine days earlier puberty.

And that resulted in 16% more heifers having at least one cycle prior to the beginning of the breeding season.

And if you have at least one cycle prior to breeding, the other literature shows that the conception rate or fertility is higher in those heifers that have one or multiple cycles prior to breeding.

So that's how the Oklahoma Gold Program might benefit fall-born replacement heifers to be bred here in November.

(country 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 at around the United States and think about tradition and what's typical, we wean calves 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, this 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 calf'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 going to 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 them 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 vaccination 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 in consideration if you're gonna do it.

And thanks for joining us on "Cow-Calf Corner".

- Oklahoma producers have been through a lot in recent months.

Wheat harvest delays, summer planting pressures and damage from a major storm just to name a few, but you are definitely not alone.

Dr. Shannon Ferrell has some tips today on mental health as well as some resources available through OSU extension.

- Well, it's getting to be that time of year where we start to think about wheat harvest in Oklahoma.

And wheat harvest is always a stressful time.

There's always so much to be done.

You're trying to maintain equipment, you're yelling at everyone, and you all know that you have to get your wheat in the bin before that next hailstorm comes through and just pounds it into clay-flavored flour.

So it's just naturally a stressful time.

This year we've got a lot more added stress because we've been going through this terrific drought that's been really impacting yield projections for some time now.

And so some of us may not even be able to harvest a crop.

So there's just lots of stress around that.

That's why it's even more important for our farmers and ranchers to be focusing on taking care of their mental health in this difficult time.

There are lots of things that farmers and ranchers just have to do that are just so far out of their control.

We can put in all the inputs, all the labor, do everything exactly right according to best practices and we still don't know if the product's gonna come out the back end.

So it's really important to do a few things.

Number one, we know that there are lots of time pressures around harvest, but it's important that you take your time and do things safely.

Just in the past couple of weeks here in Oklahoma, we've gotten reports of some farm fatalities as a result of accidents involving ag equipment.

So please take your time and be safe.

Another thing that we wanna do is make sure that we manage stress in a productive way.

Even if we're under a lot of time pressure, take some time maybe five or 10 minutes to de-stress, find a way to process your stress.

Talk about that with somebody that you trust, someone who will listen to you, non-judgmentally.

And sometimes it can be equally as important for you to be that person who can listen to a friend non-judgmentally and just say, "Hey, I get it.

This is a tough time."

We have a few modules out there available about how to deal with stress.

How can we process that in a positive way versus doing things that might actually make things worse like, you know, drug or alcohol use.

We also talk about mindfulness, which does not involve you sitting in the lotus position on the top of your combine making humming noises, okay, that's not mindfulness that we're talking about here.

It's just a way that when you're starting to feel anxious or stressed out to slow things down, kind of recenter yourself and be able to be your best.

But if something does go wrong, if you had a neighbor that's lost a combine to a fire, if you had a neighbor that just simply has nothing to harvest because of the drought impacts, we have a module specifically on there about dealing with disaster.

How can we be a positive impact on the people around us to make things better not worse, not just in the near term, but over the long haul, because those things don't just have immediate impact.

They have impact for some time to come.

All these resources are available, like I said, at the Farm Stress website, and we'll include the link for those with you here with the broadcast so you can access those on demand anytime you want.

(upbeat music playing) - Curly Dock is a toxic plant that grows here in Oklahoma.

There's actually quite a few different types of dock but Curly dock is the one that's most widely distributed across the state.

It's not acutely toxic to animals so it doesn't kill them really quickly.

They have to eat quite a bit of Curly dock to actually have issues with toxicosis.

But the issues happen typically when you have animals that are turned into a pasture, before many of our warm season grasses have started to grow.

Other instances when you might have issues with Curly dock are when you do a prescribed burn in a pasture and the areas along a creek or pond don't burn well.

This plant typically grows in those types of habitat and if it doesn't burn up and it's one of the only plants that's still remaining after the fire, you can have animals that end up consuming it and quite a bit of it, enough that can really be toxic issue for them.

If they consume enough of this plant, it will kill cattle, sheep, and goats.

You can identify Curly dock by its growth form so it has these long, narrow, really wavy leaves, as you can see here.

Then when it flowers, it puts on these little winged seeds, and as they, as they mature they turn this darker red color as you can see behind me.

At this time of year, midsummer, we typically don't have too many issues with animals consuming Curly dock simply because there's so many other plants for them to choose from.

If you're gonna control this plant, the best time of year to do it is when it's small, early spring.

Typically, you wanna spray it with herbicide before it's six inches tall.

24-D and methyl furyl methyl are two really excellent inexpensive herbicides that effectively control Curly dock.

A good thing to do at this time of year is note where you have this plant growing so then next year you can go ahead and kill it when it's small.

This plant is perennial, so in the winter it will die back to the ground, but it will regrow from that same plant.

So you'll have the same plants growing back in the same location year after year.

- Finally today, SUNUP's Kurtis Hair takes us to a workshop that helps people learn how to deal with a widespread loss of livestock.

- When you walk out of here over the next three days, you've gotta be able to understand what all these bullet points mean.

- Oklahoma State was involved in developing a train-the-trainer workshop.

And this train-the-trainer workshop was focused on how you manage animal mortalities.

This is in the event that we have mass mortalities due to an invasive pathogen, such as avian influenza or African swine fever virus.

And so we developed this workshop in conjunction with the University of Maine Extension, as well as USDA and others within the state of Oklahoma including the Department of Ag.

And essentially the whole goal of the workshop was to have people on site that knew how to manage animal mortalities.

And you might not think of this, it's like, "Well, you never have enough animal mortalities to really need to manage them."

Well, in the event of a pathogen coming in, you have to manage these mortalities because those animals have to be managed in a way that they're not gonna spread that pathogen.

- We've been very, very fortunate in being able to put on a schooling here and it's been a big collaborative effort with a lot of industry and the university.

- [Kurtis] Gary Stone is a field veterinarian for the Oklahoma Department of Agriculture Food and Forestry.

He says, a train-the-trainer workshop like this one is essential.

- We are bringing people together to get them trained in the incidents of a catastrophic event that might occur.

It's not a matter of if it will occur, it's a matter of when it occurs, and we just need to be prepared.

And so this is a great training.

- You know, one of the most unfortunate thing when a pathogen, especially a foreign agent pathogen, comes into our large animal facilities is that you have to depopulate those.

And so essentially what happens is we have all these approved methods, but not every approved method is very well understood.

- [Kurtis] Attendees of the workshop not only learn about these methods in a classroom, but also get the chance to get a hands-on experience.

- What you have here are five different compost piles that are used for one of the training programs that we have going on.

- [Kurtis] Bill Seekins is an associate with the University of Maine Extension.

And today he's teaching trainees how to properly set up a composting station.

- Well actually, almost anything that was once part of a plant or animal is potentially compostable.

Okay?

The thermometers are used to indicate how much biological activity is going on in the pile because the more biological activity, the higher the temperature comes in the pile.

- [Kurtis] The hotter the temperature, the better chance you have of killing pathogens.

- Whenever we're dealing with any of these events, it's many people from many different agencies, and universities, and industry that have to cooperate to deal with these events.

And so this cooperative effort that's going on now reflects that kind of effort that's necessary to deal with these big events.

- We have to remember, Oklahoma, really, we're an ag state.

We've got a lot of agriculture here.

And this is about secure food for our population and feeding the world.

We have to remember agriculture is very, very important to the security of this nation.

- [Kurtis] In Payne County, I'm Kurtis Hair.

(bluegrass music) - That'll do it for our show this week.

Remember, you can see SUNUP anytime on our website, 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.

(gentle music)