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

I'm Lyndall Stout.

Oklahoma Wheat producers are working around late spring rains and thunderstorms as they try to get combines in the fields.

We'll have more a little bit later in the show on how the quality of this year's crop is looking.

But first SUNUPs Kurtis Hair catches up with Dr. Amanda Silva to see how far along producers are with harvest.

- Well, with all the rains that we've been getting here and there, so it's being a little bit slow.

I would say we are about what, 30% harvest, maybe by the end of this week we'll be more advanced hopefully.

Yields, you know, as usually that's how it goes we started cutting our south southwest southern plots and yields have been favorable.

Good test weight, good protein in some cases where the wheat was ready, the ground took a while for us to cut.

Then we are seeing some decline on past weight but overall it's been a stop and go but I think hopefully we'll be moving more from now on.

- So what about in those areas that were looking pretty rough in regards to precipitation?

Did that rain help at all in regards to their crop and just depending on, I guess it depends on what, where out in the development the crop was?

- Yeah, so the, the rain, the earlier the crop was or I guess the less developed that crop was, the more beneficial that rain was to our wheat.

And so we could see an impact, a positive impact of that rain, especially for grain filling for in some cases where plants were still at flowering.

So that rain came in in a good time.

So we are seeing good impact of that rain.

I'm very surprised with the yields that we are seeing.

So of course we didn't cut as many fields this year just because a lot of fields didn't make it.

But the ones that were hanging in there, got that rain in May, we are seeing good yields considering the conditions we had.

- Well that's really good news for those producers who are getting these rains they're hitting pause on the harvest.

Are you hearing any sprouting issues pop up?

- I haven't, yeah so I haven't heard any issues yet with sprouting.

Last year we did have some issues at Chickasha and El Reno.

So we'll stay, I mean we'll stay we'll look at it and pay attention to that.

And if producers are curious about their varieties they can go to our last year's data on our website and see what are the varieties that are more prone, less prone to sprouting.

Just because last year we had some heavy infestations in some of the locations and we did some analysis we did some ratings so they can see that on our results last year.

- So what type of like environment is really conducive for sprouting in wheat?

- So you would be wheat's already matured.

We start getting all that rain, very humid environment.

If we get cloudy day, that's where we start seeing now in the forecast we see very high temperatures.

So I'm reluctant to say if that would have an effect.

So last year when we got a lot of sprouting was more of those cloudy days, very humid and a lot of rain when the wheat was already matured.

So we have to see what the weather does but it's just good to pay attention especially if they're trying to take the somewhere.

So it's good to pay attention to that.

- And you mentioned last year's data from the variety trials but you're actually getting pretty close to having this year's variety trial data out as well?

- Yes.

Actually we already have some results posted.

So really invite producers to look on our website and we already have Altus, Walters we should have by the end of this week, Chickasha, Apache but we should have, we should have the locations.

As soon as we harvest, we get into it.

And this year we have a very efficient group.

We have yield and protein data already posted at the same time.

So when producers go look at it they'll be able to see yield, test, weight and protein in all those results.

- And yeah, and what's great about that too is it's not just yield and protein, like you mentioned you could see like which variety trials tended to sprout earlier than other ones, right?

- Yeah.

So anything that we see that is out of place let's say we saw some leaf frost infestations later in the season at Chickasha, and Dr. Owen went there, rated the trial.

So we'll put those ratings in in our results so they can see.

So anything that we see there in those trials let's say lodging, if we see sprouting or anything we'll include there so they can see the differences among varieties.

- All right, thanks Amanda.

We'll check back with you in just a couple weeks.

Amanda Silva, small grain specialist here at Oklahoma State University.

And if you'd like a link to the variety trial data just go to our website, SUNUP.OKstate.edu.

(light guitar music) - Welcome to the Mesonet Weather Report.

I'm Wes Lee.

The wet weather continued again this past week, and the distribution was more evenly spread.

The seven-day rainfall map from Wednesday morning shows that rain fell statewide.

There was an inch plus at more than half of the Mesonet stations.

The largest total was more than two and a half inches in Adair County.

The number on the maps are actual measurements at our 120 stations.

The colors on the map are radar-estimated amounts that come to us courtesy of the River Forecast Office in Tulsa.

The green areas on this soil moisture map shows the areas with the most improvement over the last week at the 10-inch level.

The actual fractional water index numbers at 10 inches are shown on this map.

The legend here is one when the sensor is as wet as it can read and zero when it's as dry as it can read.

There are no reds showing up and only a few yellow areas, mostly in the northeastern counties.

Here is the map from exactly one year ago.

The east was a little better but the west and panhandle much worse.

Remember that it quit raining last year in June and it was fall before it picked up again.

Let's hope that's not the case this year.

Now here's Gary with the newest revised drought map.

- Thanks, Wes, and good morning, everyone.

Well, Wes detailed those short-term rains.

I'm gonna take a look at the longer-term rains and see how that impacts our latest drought monitor map.

Let's get right to that new map.

It looks much better than we've seen over the last few months.

This is the best map we've seen, actually, since probably going back to last June, so well over a year.

We do have a lot of that red and deep red gone.

The worst part of the state still up in north-central Oklahoma where that extreme and exceptional drought exists and also a little bit up there in Woodward County.

Other than that, we are headed in the right direction, except across parts of eastern Oklahoma where we are seeing a little bit more of that abnormally dry condition start to be filtered in.

Let's take a look at this 60-day rainfall map from the Oklahoma Mesonet.

We can see many areas have above 10 inches of rainfall, and that's really good.

It's gotten rid of all those short-term drought impacts, and in some cases, the long-term drought impacts.

Still have areas below normal.

We can see that on the next map.

Up in northeast Oklahoma, five to more than seven inches below normal.

Down in south-central Oklahoma, again, three to five inches below normal.

Most areas, however, are at least close to normal, within an inch or two or well above normal, as we are out across western Oklahoma.

So, quite a switch around for western Oklahoma, which was previously going months and months without rainfall, and now they are three to eight inches above normal, depending on where you're at.

One of the things that might impact us in our summer through early fall rainfall season would be the hurricanes in the Atlantic.

With El Nino in place, it does cut down a little bit on the expected numbers, but still we see a 40% chance of near normal number of hurricanes.

So, five to nine hurricanes total, 12 to 17 tropical systems that are named.

Major hurricanes, one to four.

We don't really have to worry about the major hurricanes, we just want to know if we're gonna get any remnants of hurricanes up our way.

With that being said, we have to remember that we also get remnants from those hurricanes and tropical systems from the Pacific, so we do have to watch out for that as well.

That's it for this time.

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

- Summertime means summer pests for both people, as we've talked about in recent weeks, and your cattle.

Today, Dr. Justin Talley, our OSU Extension livestock entomologist, gets us up to speed on some prevention and treatment options for your herd.

- Yeah, as we come into late spring and into early summer, we're gonna start experiencing increased populations of ticks and flies on cattle.

Our main concern is that the ticks that are on cattle can cause some production losses, whether it's due to increased irritation or just decreased production because of the number of ticks on them.

The main things you need to consider is that you'll feel a tick before you see a tick.

So, you're actually gonna have to check those animals in a chute and conduct a tick scratch.

And that's simply putting an animal in a chute where you can feel around that animal between the legs, the brisket area, down the jawline, and kind of along the sides of that animal to determine if they have significant tick populations.

And, of course, we are coming up to the tail end of what we call the Gulf Coast tick season.

They can get both into calves as well as cows, and they're always feeding on the ears of cattle.

And you'll easily see those.

But we're kind of coming into the end of that season.

But you'll start seeing this overlap with lone star ticks, American dog ticks, and Gulf Coast ticks all feeding on cattle at this time.

And the main thing is just to get some preventative measures in there, whether it's insecticides, whether it's treated ear tags, pour-ons, or sprays.

- But just think about where the ticks are located, and how each of those work differently to control the tick.

So as we are coming into the summer periods and we have increased temperatures, some available moisture, including humidity, we're gonna start seeing increased fly populations on cattle.

Our most significant fly populations that impact cattle across the state are horn flies.

In fact, we know that annually, horn flies cost about $1.36 billion just to the US cattle industry.

That's a pretty significant impact, anywhere from the cost of controlling that fly to the impact that fly has.

Our main issue is that you have many flies on the cow that can take anywhere from 1.5 milligrams to 2.0 milligrams of blood, but multiply that by 300 to 1,000 flies.

And that becomes a severe irritation and plus, it impacts production and efficiency of those animals.

Yeah, we have two other flies that can impact cattle.

The stable fly and the horse fly.

These are both blood feeding flies.

Stable flies are coming from areas you're not traditionally thinking of, which includes your winter hay feeding sites.

If you don't clean up those winter hay feeding sites, then it's gonna contribute to significant populations of stable flies.

They will tend to decrease as it gets warm.

So you'll see them decrease in July and August, but then they'll come back in September and October sometimes.

And then our other fly that is a common issue across Oklahoma are horse flies.

And of course, horse flies and deer flies are large flies that can irritate cattle significantly.

Our challenge with this fly is that it's only the female flies that are feeding on the animals, and they're only on the animal for a short period of time.

So our traditional control techniques, such as insecticides may have a limited impact.

So it's more or less trying to prevent animals being exposed from those flies in problematic areas.

(upbeat music) - We found out how wheat harvest is progressing.

So Kim, what's the market looking like?

- Well, if you look at wheat prices, they've been wallowing around for the last week.

They finally, quote, stabilized.

I don't think that stability's gonna last very long.

We were up around $8.55.

We rammed it down to 7.44.

We came back up to around 7.75.

We're back down around 7.45 for harvest delivered wheat.

You look at the spread between the soft red winter wheat and the hard red winter wheat, remember, we talked about a couple months ago, that was $2.50 with hard red or premium to soft red.

Well, that premium now is down to $1.50 hard to red.

I think we need to look at world production.

It's been a record 29.4 billion bushels.

29 billion bushel record last year.

So we've got lots of wheat around the world.

And so you look back at that price, it indicates to me there's some downside pressure there.

Russia, 3.1 plus billion bushels.

3.4 just under that last year.

Their average is 29 billion.

Russia's got a lot of wheat to put on the export market.

That's probably gonna pressure our price.

And Ukraine, 643 million bushels for their production this year.

Their average is 981.

I think Ukraine will continue to export that, but that's a big question mark.

- So we talked earlier in the show that rains have kind of stopped wheat harvest a little bit, but has it affected the quality of the wheat crop at all?

- Well, it's probably had some impact on test weight, maybe a little bit on protein.

Somebody asked me if I'd heard anything about sprouting.

I haven't heard that yet, but if it continues to rain in certain areas, we could get some sprout damage for the wheat.

But right now, I think things are going relatively well.

- So let's shift on the corn.

What's the latest news there?

- Well, corn prices went down.

They were relatively high.

They got down around $4.75.

They're back up around 4.30.

The corn is getting planted and is planted relatively well.

It's turning dry in some of those areas, and drought is putting its ugly head up.

And the market's concerned.

And so corn prices have been going higher.

You look at what the current corn price, if you happen to have some corn to sell, $6.40 at up around Mannford, Pond Creek.

The '23 harvest price, $5.30 cents.

As we talked about the drought, the crop conditions lowered the condition of corn down to around 62%.

And Brazil is gonna have 11% increase in their corn crop and record there.

And that can probably put some pressure on corn prices later on.

- What about soybean?

- Well, if you look at the soybean market, we were up around 12.50, got around 10.70.

We've increased almost a dollar back up to 11.65 for harvest delivered beans.

I think we need to look at production for the United States around 4.5 billion bushels, a record there.

Brazil, 6 billion bushel record.

- Argentina, they had problems with their soybean production this year.

1.8 billion bushel.

Exports to United States, 2 billion.

Brazil, 3.5 plus billion bushels.

Number one soybean exporter, number one soybean producer, and then Argentina with their production problems.

Only around 200 million bushel production there.

Brazil, 24% increase in their production of soybeans this year.

- Any good news at all happening in the crop markets?

- Well, I think the crops are coming on relatively good, these rains, where there's some potential to damage the hard red winter wheat crop that we're harvesting.

I think it's positive for our summer crops, our corn, our beans, our cotton.

I think, and there is, I believe, the largest return.

so bring on the rain.

Stop it where we can get this wheat in, but I think the good news is the summer crops are looking relatively well right now, and prices are holding up relatively high.

- All righty, thanks Kim.

Dr. Kim Anderson, Grain Marketing Specialist here at Oklahoma State University.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] Oklahoma wheat harvest now stretches from the Texas line to points near the Kansas line, especially along the I-35 corridor.

That's according to the latest report from the Oklahoma Wheat Commission.

Progress is stop and go in some areas, of course, because of rain.

Looking farther northwest, not much activity yet from Shattuck up toward Balko and Hooker.

A lot of dry land wheat in the Panhandle area this year will not be cut because of severe drought.

For the loads coming into the elevators, 30 to 40 bushels per acre to the south is the average with lower yields in the 20s to mid-30s in Central Oklahoma at this point.

Test weights range from 58 to 62 pounds per bushel, with protein at 12% as the statewide average.

Harvest is now about 35% complete.

To keep up with the latest harvest reports from the Oklahoma Wheat Commission, we have a link for you at sunup.okstate.edu.

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

I'm Mark Johnson, and it's the time of year when branding time or that first round of vaccinations, when calves are about two to four months of age in spring calving herds, that we're using our cattle working facilities, and often that time of year when we maybe haven't used them for a few months that we start considering improvements or maybe an addition to what we've already got.

And so we revisit the topic of facilities, cattle working systems, and some basic things to take into consideration as we make plans or potentially make additions to 'em.

Typical cattle corrals or working pens have have got some fundamental components.

We're gonna have the catch pens where whenever we first gather cattle outta pastures.

We're gonna be in those pens.

We're gonna have some probably wider sorting alleys out of those.

Eventually we're gonna work into a crowding area.

Crowding areas we're gonna talk more about next week.

There's a couple different options on crowding areas, but more details on that next week.

Eventually the purpose of our crowding out or crowding system is to get the cattle into an alleyway or what we commonly refer to as a crowding alley, which is a means of getting 'em to the actual squeeze shoot with a head catch system on it, something like we're looking at here to my right as we shoot this week.

Now, we can also have a load out coming outta that alleyway, and that is another important part of the corral or working system itself.

So those are the basic components.

One of the things that's really important to think about is just normal cattle behavior.

Several things to keep in mind.

Typically cattle process one thought at a time.

They're an intelligent creature, but they tend to think about one thing at a time and they instinctively want to see us whenever we're around them.

They want to go by us if we're in a vicinity together.

They want to go back to where they have came from, and they want to go with other cattle or be with other cattle.

Thinking about normal cattle behavior is an important part of putting together a good facility.

And if we think through that process and design it right, we can manage to decrease the likelihood of injury to cattle or humans.

We can reduce the amount of stress on the cattle.

We can manage to work cattle in a fashion where where we need them to go is kind of their idea and capitalize on those instinctual behaviors of the cattle to get 'em to do what we need 'em to do.

Another important consideration is location, and we need to look at our particular layout of farm and ranch.

Think about where pastures converge so we've got a central catchpoint.

Working facilities are an expensive, long-term investment.

We don't wanna build more of 'em than what we need, but if we're looking at say a quarter section, half section, a one section pasture and we've got that divided up into grazing paddocks, and we might be able to put in one working system instead of putting in multiple working systems, obviously we're gonna be able to invest in it, plan it better, and have a central point that's more convenient to catch cattle.

Topography and just elevation of where we build a set of pens is very important.

We need good drainage.

We need that we're not gonna be in standing water and catch a lot of manure over time, and so.

- Even if we have to backfill with some extra dirt or bring in a few loads of rock or gravel it is worth getting that elevation, the slope draining off of it just right for the long term benefit so we can get trucks and trailers in there and inclement weather and be moving cattle around as we need to without being bogged down in a lot of mud and slop.

Final consideration as far as location, give thoughts to where people are living, where your house is.

It may not seem like a big deal, 360 some days a year, but if we end up building a corral too close to our residence, flies, noise, things like that during times of really heavy use can get to be a headache for us.

I hope some of this helps.

I hope you get all your cattle working facilities designed so that they work for you now, they work for your specific operation.

Give thought to what kind and size of cattle you're actually processing, but put the thought and the planning into that.

And there's actually quite a bit of good information online to look at and a couple reference sources in the article that accompanies this week, cow calf corner segment.

So thanks for joining us this week.

(upbeat country music) - A pond can only hold so many fish.

On average that amount is about 250 pounds per surface acre.

So, do not transfer fish from other water bodies into your pond unless you're doing that on the advice of a fisheries biologist.

(upbeat country music) It's widely known that ponds present a drowning hazard, but what is less known is that the main people who are at risk of drowning, the predominant group are children ages 4 and under.

Keep an eye on those little ones.

(upbeat country music) A major part of your pond that is often not thought about is the watershed, the area of land that slopes down towards the pond.

Anything that happens in that area is going to end up in your pond.

A major concern would be construction or overgrazing.

These things open up the soil to erosion and can quickly turn a pond from being beautiful into a muddy condition and also at the same time, fill up the basin with silt.

(upbeat country music) If you've ever been swimming in a pond and dove down deep, you've probably been shocked by the sudden coldness.

Contrary to popular belief, this is not caused by a spring feeding into the pond.

This instead is simple pond stratification, the setting up of warm layers on the top and a cold layer on the bottom of the pond.

(upbeat country music) Many people who are interested in angling will add fish attractors or what is called structure to their pond.

This may be piles of brush, old cinder blocks, tires, et cetera.

It is important not to put these in the deepest part of the pond because generally speaking there will be no oxygen in the deepest parts.

Put those at about 4 to 5 feet of water depth in shallow work areas of your pond.

(upbeat country music) Beavers are very interested in your pond.

Every spring, there's a new crop of young ones that are looking for new territories and they're going to be ending up in your pond.

If you're not paying attention you may not even notice this, but they will burrow into your dam underwater and work upwards until they create a large den inside your dam.

This can lead to a failure of the dam.

Do not let this happen.

Sit out in your pond at night.

Either look for the beaver by the moonlight or listen for the sounds of their tail slapping the water.

If you detect deep beaver activity in your pond seek advice on how best to get rid of them.

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

A reminder, you can see "Sunup" anytime at sunup.okstate.edu.

And also follow us on YouTube and social media.

I'm Lindel Stout.

Have a great week everyone and best of luck as you move through harvest.

We'll see you next time at "Sunup".

(upbeat country music)