(gentle music) (upbeat music) - Devastating storms with straight line winds and tornadoes left quite a path of destruction and thousands of people in the dark in several counties in northeast Oklahoma for days on end.

Hello everyone, and welcome to SUNUP.

I'm Lyndall Stout.

We'll have some tips on cleaning up after the storm a little bit later in the show.

But first, we're looking at some of the dangers for cattle after severe weather with Dr. Dave Lalman.

- Well after storm blows through, things are gonna move around.

And strong winds are gonna damage trees.

Maybe blow foreign objects or materials into pastures or pens where livestock are housed.

And so, the bottom line is, those can create health challenges to livestock.

And so people just need to try if they can, to get those those items picked up.

The thing that we see probably most often is hardware disease due to sharp objects being mostly accidentally consumed by livestock.

But other things can cause health challenges as well.

You know, things like net wrap, or a hand towel, for crying out loud, or maybe a tarp, plastic bags, are all things that could over time create a health challenge for cattle.

- Dive a little deeper into what hardware disease actually is.

- Hardware is generally gonna be caused by sharp metal objects or shattered wood splinters, accidental consumption of those.

And perhaps swallowing those, it goes down in the esophagus.

The metal objects are gonna be heavy and so they may sink to the bottom of the reticulum.

And let's say it gets wedged in there.

And the way the rumen reticulum works is that strong muscle contractions are what moves the digestive material around in that rumen.

And strong muscle muscular contraction can lead to certainly an abrasion, and possibly a puncture wound, and that can lead to all kinds of issues.

If we're talking about hardware disease, there's gonna be pain involved.

And so they might move slowly.

They might stand with the humped back trying to relieve some pressure somewhere in that rumen reticulum.

They might stand with their neck extended, their head extended to try to relieve that pain.

The other thing is they're gonna gradually go downhill in terms of losing body condition.

And certainly, any of those symptoms, you need to engage a veterinarian.

- Some storms of course, there's widespread tree damage, so I would think there would be an extra concern after that kind of damage.

- Yeah, again, I think it would be accidental, and the more overgrazed the pasture is, the more hungrier the animals are, the more likely something like that would occur.

But on the other hand, growing calves, much like a puppy or much like my 11 month old grandson, everything goes to the mouth.

And those little calves are the same way.

They like to explore.

They may chew on it for a while, eventually be tempted to swallow, and that's when they can swallow some of those foreign materials.

- And this is designed to pick up some of that stuff when feeding?

- Yeah, so this concern may be, especially with the sharp metal objects, may be more of a concern with baled or harvested forage because the operator doesn't see it.

And so it gets baled up, maybe even ground when the feed is being mixed in a total mixed ration, put in some sort of a feed truck or feed wagon and fed back to the livestock.

But, I mean I think the idea is to make sure that your magnet on the spout is working, because those things work really well and they'll try to pull all the metal objects out and allow them to be removed.

- Okay, Dave, lots of great information.

Obviously, after severe weather, but really any time of the year.

- Anytime.

- Okay, thank you.

- Thank you.

(upbeat music) - Welcome to the Mesonet Weather Report.

I'm Wes Lee.

This past week marked the start of summer, and with it came some sweltering temperatures.

On Tuesday, five locations exceeded 100 degrees for the daily high temperature.

The rest of the state all clocked in somewhere in the 90s.

This is not that far off of the highs expected for this time of year of around 91 or 92 statewide.

- [Wes] What made the heat miserable was the addition of all the excessive moisture in the air.

When that was factored in, heat index numbers climbed into the teens for much of the state, topping out at 116 seen in three southern counties.

Another way to look at this would be with the Wet Bulb Globe Temperature Risk.

This tool takes several weather variables into account to come up with our best indicator of heat related illness.

The reds and blacks on this map mean there is a high to extreme risk of heat issues for individuals who must spend extended times outdoors.

By Wednesday, most of the state got a slight relief from the extreme felt temperatures as the heat dome settled into Texas.

According to the National Weather Service forecast predictions we can expect even hotter temperatures this weekend and continuing into next week.

Now, here's Gary keeping you up to date on the rainfall situation.

- Thanks Wes, and good morning everyone.

Well, our drought quenching rains continue, so let's get right to the new map 'cause it's looking pretty good.

Not many colors left on the map just some across west Oklahoma.

It's not perfect, but it's certainly much better than what we've seen.

If you go up into north central Oklahoma of course the remnants of that long term drought we still have extreme to a little bit of exceptional drought up there, but by and large across most of the state, drought is definitely shrinking.

Now the only difference is across parts of east Oklahoma and I'll show you the problem area there in our 60 day rainfall maps.

The 60 day rainfall map from the Mesonet shows the problem areas in those lighter oranges and yellows.

So where we get down to six to seven to eight inches of rainfall, it's not bad, but for this time of the year, it's actually well below normal.

When we look at those departure from normal rainfalls it shows up even better across far northeast Oklahoma, four to six inches of rainfall below over the last 60 days and even down across the south central Oklahoma three to four inches below normal.

So these are the problem areas where those new areas of abnormally dry conditions and even a little bit of moderate drought has started to show up in the eastern parts of the state.

So something to keep an eye on as we go forward into the summer.

Why it's a little bit risky this time of the year, of course rainfall starts to dwindle and when we start to see that depth ridge show up over head that kills our rain chances.

And that's exactly what's showing up as we go into the last week of June into early July with increased odds of above normal temperatures across the entire state, but especially that southern two thirds of the state.

That will certainly place a bit more pressure on the moisture in the soil and on the surface.

And then when you look at the precipitation we also see increased odds of below normal precipitation across that region.

Not quite as bad, but certainly not great across that southern parts of the forecast area.

Something to keep in mind across southern Oklahoma as we go forward.

That's it for this time.

See you next time on the Mesonet Weather Report.

- Recovering after severe weather and tornadoes can take a really long time and a lot goes into it.

Our sister show "Oklahoma Gardening", put together these tips on cleaning up tree damage.

- Hi, my name's Riley Coy.

I'm with Oklahoma Forestry Services.

You may notice that we've been ravaged by an ice storm that hit much of central Oklahoma and western Oklahoma in the last week or so.

Looking around, how can any of these trees possibly be saved you might be wondering.

Well, we're gonna show you a little bit today about what to look for in your trees, how to assess your trees, and whether or not they can be saved.

So two things we wanna talk to you about today, safety first and foremost.

You're gonna be working around a lot of unstable limbs.

You're gonna be using sharp equipment.

We want you to be safe, especially if you don't use this equipment often and you're out there in a pinch trying to get some of this work done.

Safety first is number one priority.

Secondly is patience.

This is not just gonna be a couple month cleanup ordeal.

This is gonna be a long drawn out process and we want you to realize it.

Having patience is okay.

Trees live a long time, they're on a much longer timescale than what we are.

They can deal with this stress.

So it's not important that you have to go out there and fix all of this damage right now.

Have a little patience, prioritize, get your most important hazards out of the way first, the things over your roof, the things over your driveway, the loose limbs that have potential to do some damage to yourself, your family, or your property.

That's what we want you to focus on.

Now, inevitably in a situation like this we're gonna have an army of people with chainsaws knocking on doors.

We want you to be cautious.

While they may be good to help you clean up your yard, pick up the dead fall, clear out the driveway, we really stress the importance of having an ISA certified arborist look at your trees and check them for structural integrity.

Check them to see if they may potentially survive this or may have to be removed.

They're specially trained in looking at tree damage such as this.

We have a link on our website, treesaregood.org that can find you a certified arborist wherever you're at within the state.

So while you're out there doing this cleanup there are a couple things to consider.

Wood utilization is a big one.

- All this debris laying on the ground is gonna go to the landfill.

There are some things that you could do to potentially utilize that wood, get together with your neighbors to get a contractor and maybe get a lower rate.

You can utilize the limbs and debris as mulch.

If you do lose a large tree, there are sawmills around that will happily saw that up for you, turning into slabs, allow you to make something out of that old oak tree in your front yard that you've been so attached to your whole life.

If you go on our website, there's a link called Sawmill Map that shows you all the sawmills in the area.

That's a great resource to use if you are having to lose your trees.

One of the biggest decisions you may face is whether or not to keep your tree and Oklahoma Forestry Services had some guidelines for you to follow to help you make those decisions.

- After a big storm, tree damage like this can look really devastating, but it turns out some trees can be salvaged, but how do you know which ones?

For some guidance our friends at Oklahoma Gardening turned to another state forestry expert.

- So we're out here today to kind of take a look at trees that have varying degrees of damage to them.

Let's take a first look at one of the trees that didn't really sustain too much damage.

So we have a sawtooth oak right here.

If you look up into the crown, you can see that several of the branches are broken off on it and it's only a small percentage.

I would estimate this to be about 25% of the crown gone, so this tree has a really good chance of surviving.

If you look up top where some of those branches are broke, one of the first things that you should be considering doing is that needs to be cut back to the next union, because if you just have a real jagged broken branch on there what you're gonna see is a lot more decay will move into the tree.

But overall, this one is in pretty good shape, even though you see a lot of debris down on the bottom, this is a candidate for keeping around.

(upbeat music) So if your tree looks like this oak tree there's about 75% of it that has been damaged.

If you take a close look up the main trunk of the tree what you'll see is none of the heartwood has been exposed.

So the branches that have broken off of this tree can be correctively pruned back on the main trunk and up at the top of the tree it still has its same leader.

So these are one of those candidates that although 75% of it is gone this is one that we really should take a look at, do some mitigated pruning on it, and then monitor it for the next year, because once you remove those hazards it's not gonna be an elevated threat until sometime down.

(upbeat music) One of the things that we noticed this go around because it was such a historic event, is that some of the trees that we normally would associate with being ice tolerant like Bald Cyprus, even sustained damage, maybe it was just happening so early in the year but Bald Cyrus is one that we usually see do well, but even so that's not the case with this one.

So this is an older established Bald Cyrus and it's lost about 50% of the branches on one side of it, and so this is one of those, the top is intact.

I think with some corrective pruning along those branches that were lost.

This one is certainly something that we should give it another chance just to see how well it could possibly recover.

(peaceful music) What's unfortunate is that we're seeing a lot of what's behind me right here.

When you have that tree that is over 75% and in this instance, this tree is obviously one of those that we should consider removing because if you look up into it, all the damage is going into the heartwood of the tree.

So it's unfortunate, but this is one of those that we probably should go ahead and schedule to have removed.

Now, we've given you a whole lot of advice here today but know that there's still a lot of different places that you can go.

Go to Oklahoma Forestry Services webpage www.forestry.ok.gov, and then certainly look for resources from Oklahoma State University.

They have a number of wonderful fact sheets that they have that can help help us get through this, and again, lastly, please be safe and please be patient.

Our trees have been recovering from these kind of tragic events for a lot longer than we've been helping them.

So reach out to us, reach out to those in the know, and hopefully we can all get through this together.

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

I'd like to visit with you a few minutes about the world crop market and changes in those markets.

Now, I think one factor we can't ignore is El Nino and La Nina, and that's weather patterns that go around the world that determines where crop conditions are good and where crop conditions are bad.

We probably should leave that to the Mesonet guys to discuss and explain what El Nino and La Nina is.

- I wanna spend time talking about Russia, China, and Brazil.

In 1972, the average annual price of wheat was a $1.35.

By '74, it was at $4.00.

Corn was $1.60 in '72, and by 1974, peaked out for an average annual price at 3.

Soybeans went from $4.40 to $7.00.

What we saw was China entered the market in 1972, and then Russia came in and purchased products in '73.

And China and Russia have been impacting our markets since that time period, early on, and through the '80s and '90s, as buyers, and now as buyers and suppliers.

In 2009, Brazil, Russia, India, China and South America created a group called BRICS.

Their goal was for Brazil and Russia to control and be major players in the crop markets and for China and India to control and be major players in manufacturing.

And what have we seen?

Russia is the number one exporter of wheat, and for all practical purposes, our wheat price is determined in the Black Sea markets, voila, Russia.

Brazil is the number one exporter of corn this year, and they've been the number one exporter and the most important exporter of soybeans.

Brazil effectively controls the price of beans.

If you look at manufacturing, you're looking at China and India in today's markets.

How has Oklahoma farmers adapted to these changes?

What we've seen over the last 25, 30 years is wheat acres and production declining in Oklahoma, corn acres and bean acres and production of these two crops increasing.

And we've seen Oklahoma crop land be converted to pasture for beef production.

Oklahoma producers must continue to adjust to change.

And I want to finish by quote from Peter Drucker.

"There are no solutions with respect to the future.

There are only choices between courses of action.

Each imperfect, each risky, and each involving different cost."

But nothing can help the producer more than to know what alternatives are available and what they imply.

And that's what Oklahoma State University will do.

We will help you identify the alternatives you have and what they imply to your farming operation.

I'll see you next week on "Market Monitor."

(upbeat music) - We're joined now by Dr. Derrell Peel, our extension livestock marketing specialist who joins us this week via Zoom all the way from Scotland.

Hi, Derrell.

- How you doing today?

- Pretty good.

Well, tell us where you are and what you're doing.

- You bet.

You know, for the last, a little bit more than a week now, I've been traveling with a group of students on a study abroad course.

We started in Ireland a little over a week ago, and we have now been in Scotland for the last couple of days and we have a few more days left in this trip.

So this is part of a study abroad course organized out of the Ag Econ department.

It's actually led by Dr. Beth Norwood and myself.

And so, we've been seeing lots of different things and having lots of experiences with a total of a dozen kids from the College of Ag.

- Sounds really fantastic and what a great way to spend part of the summer for you and for the students.

Give us an idea of what the course is like and some of the places you've been able to visit, both culturally and agriculturally, while you're there.

- Yeah, and that well describes the intent of this trip.

We call it culture and agriculture.

You know, it's been a very fairly heavy duty travel course.

So we've stayed on the move.

We don't stay in any one place more than a night or two, so we can see more country.

And again, we've done lots of cultural thing.

We even got to spend one night in a castle in Ireland the other night.

That was kind of a treat for all of us.

But we've been doing agricultural things.

We've met with the University College Dublin, the agricultural college in Ireland, and they've got a presentation about, you know, agriculture in Ireland.

We did visit a dairy in Ireland, a really unique, little facility.

This particular operator actually has a machine, or a little retail shop on his dairy where people come in and it's a dairy vending machine.

And so you can bring a half liter or liter bottles and fill them up with any of about six flavors of milk.

- Sounds like a fantastic visit so far.

Tell us why it's important for students to have some of these experiences outside of the classroom and outside of the United States as well.

- You know, I've done these in the past and I've seen tremendous response from students when you can take them to a different setting.

They start asking questions.

You know, their initial reaction is, "Oh, this is different."

Maybe they're even a little judgmental.

But then you stop and think about, "Why are things different?

Why do, you know, why do different resource values and other things impact the way we do things?"

And it really, I think, helps students understand our own system in a lot of ways because we begin to sort of think about why we do things.

- You've sent us some pictures, the SUNUP team, to take a look at.

It looks like really beautiful scenery over there.

So describe what we're seeing in those pictures.

- You know, I sent you a number of pictures that are from the last couple of days in Scotland, but both Scotland and Ireland are largely pastoral.

That means they have largely pasture lands.

- Livestock production is important in both countries.

And so you see these scenics, you know, there's mountains, there's wide open grasslands.

I gotta be honest with you, many of these scenes in Scotland remind me of my past experience in Montana and Wyoming.

Very similar kind of look to them.

And you'll notice in some of these pictures that you'll see a lot of sheep grazing.

That's probably the biggest thing we've seen.

But there is cattle production as well.

And so, you know, all of those things are important in this area, including the Scotch Highland cattle.

That was one of the things the students were looking forward the most was getting to see the Scotch highland cattle, and we did find some of those.

- Well, Darryl, thank you very much for spending a little bit of time with us talking about what you're doing on your journey as well as where all you and the students are visiting.

We wish you great rest of your trip while you're traveling abroad and, of course, safe travels home.

- You bet, thank you very much.

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

I'm Mark Johnson, and this week we're gonna follow up our topic on cattle working facilities from last week, and specifically kind of compare and contrast a couple of different crowding systems for working cattle eventually into our squeeze, shoot, and head catch.

Now I'm standing in a sweep tub here at the OSU Purebred Beef Cattle Center right now.

What you can't see is that directly into the path that I'm looking at, we've got our catch pins, our holding area, some sorting alleys out there, and we would eventually work cattle up into this part of our working system for the sake of coaxing them down an alleyway and putting 'em in that squeeze chute.

How does the sweep tub basically work?

As you can see, we've got a solid sided tub, and an actual crowding gate right here where, that as cattle enter this system, we're gonna bring this crowding gate around, with enclosed sides, and eventually the method of exit for the cattle, they're gonna see daylight down an alleyway, which is gonna lead them to that squeeze shoot where we catch their head, and administer whatever management practices that we need to.

The bud box system, in contrast, is a system that doesn't require a sweep tub.

We basically think of building a rectangular box at a 90-degree angle to the actual alleyway that is gonna lead to our squeeze shoot.

And we capitalize on the behavior patterns of cattle to actually coax 'em into that alleyway where we want 'em to go.

The typical Bud Box system is approximately 12 foot wide, about 20 foot long, it accommodates enough mature cows that we would fill the alleyway leading to the squeeze chute with those cattle.

We basically walk 'em into it.

We capitalize on their instinct to wanna return to where they've came from.

We close the gate and there is, it's recommended that this is a solid sided gate that we're closing, and then we walk down one side of these cattle and their instinct to come back by us and wanna return from where they just came from.

They are now diverted into the alleyway, which leads them to the squeeze shoot where we actually wanna work and perform our management.

So, a bud box system has got a few advantages, and we'll kind of compare and contrast the two systems.

We can actually put one of these together or take it down outta portable panels.

The footprint of a bud box is a little smaller than a typical sweep tub like I'm standing in right now.

And so, you've got those two advantages with it.

A good or bad thing, depending on how you look at this relative to a bud box, is you to properly use it, need to be in the bud box with the cattle.

That's what's gonna compel them to actually behave and end up walking down your alleyway where you want 'em to go.

If that is not a preferred thing for you, the tub and sweep system permits the animal handler to be outside the system, outside that actual sweep gate, and you're never actually in the pen with the cattle when using that type of system.

As always, I appreciate you joining us this week on "Cow Calf Corner".

I hope some of these things help if you're taking a look at expanding or potentially building new cattle working facilities.

- Finally, today, OSU announced a new Vice President and dean of OSU Agriculture this week.

Dr. Jason Lusk will arrive in August to oversee the Ferguson College of Agriculture along with OSU Extension and OSU Ag Research statewide.

He'll be coming in from Indiana where he is currently a professor and department head in agricultural economics at Purdue University.

Dr. Tom Kuhn, the current VP and dean, is retiring this summer.

And that'll do it for "Sunup" this week.

A reminder, you can see us anytime at sunup.okstate.edu, and also follow us on YouTube and social media.

I'm Lyndall Stout.

Have a great week everyone.

And remember, Oklahoma agriculture starts at sunup.

(uplifting music)