- Hello everyone and welcome to Sunup.

I'm Lyndall Stout.

We join you today from Kay County in northern Oklahoma where wheat harvest is finally underway.

We'll find out how it's all going a little bit later in the show, but first, we're checking in with Dr. Paul Beck, our OSU extension beef cattle specialist to talk about the potential right now for some toxic forages.

- Hi, I'm Paul Beck, state Extension beef cattle specialist.

And many years or every year we talk about the toxicity of a lot of the forages that we're dealing with in Oklahoma, dealing with Johnson grass, Sudan grasses, pearl Millets, and those types of, of forages and the dangers that they possess.

This year we've had ample rainfall, which removes a lot of that danger.

As of right now, there's a lot of interest in growing mixed cover crops using Sudan grasses for a lot of the, the aggro agronomical benefits that they possess, and they're also really good forages.

And so there's, but there's a lot of fear associated with grazing these forages because of presic acid issues and nitrates, those become predominantly a problem.

Those become a problem whenever we are dealing with plants that are under stress and, you know, interruptions in their forage growth.

Whenever we have fertilized Johnson grass or Sudan grasses and growth gets interrupted, then the compound nitrate gets accumulated in those plant tissues and can become toxic to our grazing livestock.

Prussic acid is another issue that has similar symptoms in the animal, but it's happens whenever these plants are stressed due to something like drought that would interrupt the growth and then whenever they start regrowing the leaf tissue will have prussic acid in it and cause those toxicity issues.

Right now, Oklahoma has had sufficient rainfall, so that that's really not a concern, but as we get into our drier part of the year, we need to be aware that these can become issues for these forages and just be cognizant of, of that as we go forward.

Right now, as we look at this stand of mixed cover crops behind us, they're right at the perfect stage for starting to, to graze those, you know, the, the height and the maturity of those make a very high quality product so we can graze those without fear of, of having toxicity issues in those plants.

As we progress in the summer, remember it'll start getting dry.

We might start having these plants go under stress, and that's when we need to start being aware of those issues that can creep up when we start approaching haying season for these forages.

We also need to be aware of the level of fertility, how those plants are growing, and be aware of potential nitrate issues.

Nitrates accumulate in the lower stalk, so the risk would be substantially higher.

There not a preferred spot for grazing, but will be taken up by the hay if you have concerns about the toxicity of these forages going forward.

As we progress in the summer, all of our county agents in, in every county have kits to check for the presence of both nitrates and prussic acid in those forages to see if you even have 'em present, and that would give you an idea whether to send that off for further analysis to see how much as present - Time now at last for sun ups harvest story for the year.

We've been waiting a a couple of weeks, Don, and we're here now with Don Shever in Kay County.

Your combines are finally rolling.

- Yeah, finally, we've, we've had such, such a round with the weather, it seems like there's something like this happens every year.

It's either too dry or too wet, you're never happy and you know, before it all started raining back in April or March, whenever it was, we were looking at a 20 or 25 bushel wheat crop, and then the rains came and they kept coming and we were lucky to get any corn planted and now it looks like it might be a corn year, but the wheat has really turned around and took off and, and we're looking at a 50 bushel crop in most places now.

- So this field right here that you and the family are cutting, this is some, some seed wheat within with the OSU.

- This will be certified double stops.

Okay.

Yeah.

Plus, so yeah, that's the, the, that's the, the largest acreage of wheat planted in Oklahoma is double stop.

So it's, it's, it's, it's, it's just hard to beat.

It couldn't be better and so far this year if the rain to hold off about another week, we'll most people will be finished and that'll be good.

So we'll be in good - Shape then.

So you've been out and about around the county too because Kay County's been one that's really been hammered by the storms.

We've, we've heard about the flooding, we've heard about hail damage.

What are some of your fellow farmers dealing with?

- Well, we've had 26 and a half inches of rain in the last 90 days, and the roads have taken a bigger hit than the fields have.

My wife and I drove around and looked at our fields the other day, and it usually takes 45 minutes to an hour and it took over two hours because the roads were so beat up.

- You've had some years, you've been farming a long time.

Tell me about when you started and then you've had some other challenging years.

- Yeah, - Grew from time to time.

- I grew up on a farm.

When I was in the seventh grade, I decided I wanted to be a farmer, so I aimed all my education that way.

And we went through the late eighties where we had 21, 22, 23% interest.

Barely survived that.

And we've had floods in 87 that wiped out a lot of our wheat crop.

93, we had a hundred percent hail loss in, let's see, it was '07.

We had so much rain during harvest that we had sprouts a inch long sticking out of the heads of our wheat, so we didn't harvest anything that year.

It's just been a trial and we just, we just deal with it.

I mean, that's just part of life.

Sure, sure.

You just, you just, you just find a, find good sign somewhere and, and use it.

There's always something good outta something bad.

You just gotta figure it out, find it.

- Right.

And obviously you like a challenger.

You wouldn't have chose chosen this as your profession.

- Well, that's true.

But my hobby was football of course, but I did that for 50 years and as an official and got that over with.

Now my knees told me I was done, so, and now I've got to have another knee surgery after I've had both replaced.

- So you love it, but you made the decision that this is the last year to go at this level.

- Yeah.

- Tell me, tell me about getting through to that, making that decision, I'm sure with your wife and your family.

- Yeah, talking about it, you know, it it, when you try to crawl up on a combine or get in a truck and you have a struggle doing it or you can't get on your knees to get underneath something to change the oil, you gotta do something different.

And I don't like hiring people to do that kind of stuff.

I like to do it myself, but when I can't do it anymore, then, you know, it's like when I was young, I was always upset with the old guys on the Wheat commission and the Wheat Growers Association because they never let us young guys give a chance.

Well, I turned off of the Wheat Commission a couple weeks ago or a month ago, and I had that feeling I was an old guy and it's time to let somebody new get on there with younger ideas and maybe, maybe improve things that what we had going.

- So a love of farming in the Oklahoma wheat industry, a love of football and refereeing two very, very important part of your parts of your life that have run parallel for many years.

What, how, how does running a farm compare to refereeing a football game?

What are the, what are the similarities there that you've drawn from?

- Every day there's something different.

Ever play, there's something different that happens on a football field.

I could tell you a hundred things, you know, you think you've seen everything after you do 500 football games as a referee every Friday night, there's something you haven't seen before and it's unbelievable how that happens.

And it's the same way on the farm, you know, just like we had a breakdown on the combine, it took a $2 piece to fix it and we fixed it with a zip tie, but they couldn't get the part, so we were still running it.

But you gotta do things like that.

And even on a football field, if somebody gets hurt, you deal with it.

And if somebody scores a touchdown, you deal with that.

So I made a lot of friends on the football field with coaches and players too.

Even some of the players that I still in contact with, some of them went on and played pro football and did well.

So that's always nice to think back about those things.

- So are you gonna take me for a ride today?

- Absolutely.

- Great, great.

You were telling me about the grandkids love to come ride with you.

- Oh yeah.

I used to farm at Bixby and grew soybeans over there, and they would all come down and ride the tractor when I was planting or ride the sprayer when I was spraying or ride the combine.

- There's been a lot to this Don over all this time.

Your, your service.

Oh yeah, your, your clean cleaning wheat seed wheat, the family.

So as you're wa as you're finishing harvest, what, what do you think you'll, what are you gonna miss the most and what are you gonna look forward to the most?

- Well, I haven't figured that out yet.

Time will tell - The shes aren't the only ones making great progress, cutting their wheat.

The Oklahoma Wheat Commission says combines are now rolling in nearly every region of the state with some producers and custom crews even wrapping up in southwest Oklahoma.

However, producers continue to battle mud from heavy rains across northern Oklahoma, especially from Kremlin to Blackwell, Ponca City, and Braman.

Mud is also slowing things around Afton and Miami with fields partially harvested and low lying areas left to dry out.

Test weights have dropped somewhat, but the statewide average is 59 pounds per bushel.

Yields range from the mid thirties to the mid fifties with producers who used intensive management practices.

Seeing the mid sixties to the mid eighties statewide average is 11.5%.

The Oklahoma Wheat Commission offers all the details and a regional breakdown with lots of information in its regular harvest Reports that are out twice a week and you can find a link@sunup.okstate.edu.

- Good morning everyone, this is state climatologist, Gary McManus with your Mesonet weather report.

Welcome to the Summer doldrums here in Oklahoma.

I think we really needed that after all the rain we've had since April.

We definitely needed it for wheat harvest.

So let's just welcome it.

We're a little bit more humid than normal, but we'll take it.

Let's get right to that new drought monitor map.

We're in good shape here in Oklahoma, but what do we look like across the United States?

Well, we're seeing that drought again here in Oklahoma looking good, but up north we're seeing that drought shrink a little bit as we get into the northern Kansas and Nebraska areas into South Dakota.

Now out west, we're seeing it increase a little bit.

So we will keep an eye on those eastern drought areas in the desert southwest to see if they start creeping eastward towards Oklahoma.

We do know it can dry out pretty quickly this time of year.

And we're up to about a week of this dry spell, so not too bad.

No, I think we did need that again for wheat harvest, but looking good so far.

We, we needed to dry out, so we've had a good week.

Even though we're expecting a little bit of rain, the, the heat will take care of any rain that falls pretty quickly and also any that fell previously.

So we do need periodic rainfalls to keep those soil moistures up.

Now, speaking of those soils, let's take of the USDA's top soil moisture.

This is the percent adequate for the weekend.

In June 22nd, Oklahoma 74, 70 4% considered adequate soil, soil moisture.

That's up from a point from last week.

So looking good there.

And then as we go down into the sub soil, same thing up to 76% considered adequate, and that's up from 7% of the week previous.

So some of those rains that have fallen are starting to percolate down into the soil, which is good news.

Now owing to that dry spell, we do see the day suitable for field work from the USDA over the last week, 5.4 days.

That's up a half a day from the previous week.

So again, a little bit more dry weather, giving us a little bit more suitable days for that field work.

Now let's take - A look at some outlooks from the climate prediction center.

Let's start with the six to 10 day outlooks.

These are for July 1st through fifth.

So the first week of July we see for much of the state expecting near normal conditions, which for July, we'll take it now down in southeast Oklahoma, increased odds of above normal temperatures.

And for the panhandle we see increased odds of below normal temperatures as they get caught up in that monsoonal flow.

And you can see that on the precipitation outlook, all areas of the state expected to see at least increased odds of above normal precipitation.

I think that would also be welcome for the first week of July as it would keep us a little bit more mild, as long as we're not disrupting that, that winter wheat harvest, as we see continuing to go on across the state.

So we are watching for any sort of rapid drought development, any of that flash drought doesn't look like anything's on the horizon, but will always be vigilant in that area considering what we've seen again over the last two or three summers.

That's it for this time.

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

I tell you what cattle market, I think the word I would use is phenomenal.

So far in the first half of 2025.

Cattle markets have just continued to move higher.

We've set new records almost on a weekly basis.

And so, you know, this thing that's been building for a couple of years in this industry is really taking hold so far in 2025.

I think there's a couple factors that are really important.

Obviously the big one is supply.

The supply side is so tight.

We've got, you know, low cattle inventories.

We're beginning to see now in the last few weeks, beef production coming down in response to that, it's been building for a while.

And so the supply side is clearly the main driver of this, this market for now.

And, and has been for quite some time.

Well, you know, along with the supply side, you gotta have demand and demand has just continued to be stellar beef demand, we've had a remarkable first half of the year in terms of the runup in wholesale beef prices.

Consumer prices continue to be well above year over year levels and moving higher.

So as long as beef demand is strong and the supply side is like it is, we're gonna continue to have record kind of cattle markets.

Yeah, so what's the second half of the year hold?

You know, we're so high.

A lot of producers are nervous, they're excitedly nervous about this market.

You know, generally the supply side is gonna continue to tighten.

We may be saving some heifers now that will lead eventually to herd rebuilding.

But if we are started, we just barely have, and the process of saving heifers is gonna make supplies even tighter.

Beef production's gonna fall even more.

So generally I look for higher prices as we go forward, not only through 2025, but well beyond that.

Now they may slow down and not advance as fast in the second half of the year as they have thus far.

In fact, they may kind of flatten out over the heat of the summer.

But in general, I look for higher prices as we go forward.

Yeah, so, you know, there's been a lot of concern and, and remains or continues to be concerned about, you know, whether we price ourselves outta the market, if you will.

We just haven't seen it yet.

Consumers have been very loyal to beef.

The quality is good.

The, you know, the industry does a really good job.

Now there's lots of protein alternatives out there that are actually, you know, very favorably priced relative to beef.

And yet consumer demand has, has stayed strong.

So as long as we don't have some sort of macroeconomic meltdown of some kind that would affect the economy.

Broadly speaking, I think beef demand looks pretty solid for now.

- Several months ago, we, we talked about the case where you get a call in the middle of the night and your animals are out on the highway.

So we want to, we want to keep that from happening if possible.

And, and certainly one way to do that is to make sure you have a secure gate latch.

So many farms and ranches utilize a wire gate like the one I'm holding here.

But you know, if you've dealt with these that they can be awkward to handle.

And so what I've got here is a pretty common or typical what I'd call a, a cheater bar.

And, you know, those, those are helpful and can help you secure the, the gate at least in terms of getting it a good and tight and help you be able to secure that, that top wire to latch the gate shut.

But it, but it can be awkward.

And so when I lived in Montana there very common way to latch a wire gate was using a rope like the one I'm holding here.

And so I thought maybe I'd share with our folks here on Sunup how to do that.

So I've just got, you can either tie that rope to the wire gate post as I've, as I've done here, I've just got a little loop in the end of it.

But you can just make a, some sort of a standard knot and tie it to the gatepost.

And then in order to use this rope as a gate latch, what we're gonna do is start out and put the rope around the corner post away from you, such as I've done here.

Now that I've made one complete loop.

Now I can snug it up just a little bit, pull it up, and then I'm gonna make another loop all the way around the corner post.

And now basically what I've done is created a block and tackle.

And so you can snug it up pretty tight now without a whole lot of effort.

And so I'll just give it a tug and now all I have left to do is latch it.

And so to do that, you just drop that, just drop that rope in there and just give it a little bit of a half hitch right here on the corner post and you're done.

So that's, that's one easy way and a good, a good secure method to latch a wire gate.

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

Our topic this week is the factors, or particularly the management factors, the things we can perform on the farm or ranch that are gonna potentially add value to calves whenever we sell those weaned calves this fall.

Much of what's gonna influence the value of weaned calves was determined a year ago whenever we selected bulls to turn out that actually sire the spring's calf crop hide color growth potential degree of muscularity, all those things already exist in those calves that we've got on the ground and a robust market that we're currently enjoying.

There's still a lot of things we can do management wise to ensure that we get top dollar for calves when it comes marketing time.

Things like castration and dehorning, not just lead to premiums but avoid some pretty serious discounts.

We take inventory of other things we can do if we can document that calves are weaned at least 45 days prior to us marketing them.

If we take a look at the return on investment we get from a growth implant put into a young growing calf at this point relative to what that's gonna generate for us in terms of pay weight later on post weaning.

In addition, things like controlling parasites on those cows and calves is gonna lead to more pay weight in the calves and improve value if we're BQA certified and we can document that it actually enhances the value of calves.

All those things are beneficial.

But most VAC 45 programs or calf marketing programs that we're gonna get into this fall are gonna be based on health.

And if we can get a good immune system in calves through proper vaccination prior to the point of weaning coming off that ranch or farm of origin, it's gonna ensure that we minimize the risk of BRD and it's going to increase the probability that that calf stays healthy all the way through the production chain.

What do we need to be looking at right now as we're trying to get hay put up wheat harvested and enjoying some sunshine in Oklahoma?

Probably just a first round of vaccinations and calves at two to four months of age that are gonna include als viral respiratory bacterial.

Respiratory is gonna get us off on the right foot.

We can follow up with more vaccinations later.

A lot and a variety of different VAC 45 programs are out there for marketing purposes.

If you're interested in the OQBN program, more information on that is available at the sunup website.

- Finally, today we're talking about ticks and how to keep them off of both you and your livestock this summer.

Here's our OSU extension livestock entomologist, Dr. Jonathan Cammack.

- Hi, I'm Jonathan Cammack, the OSU extension livestock entomologist, and I'm going to give you a little bit of an update on ticks.

So as we start to come into this late spring, early summer, you've probably encountered a lot of ticks out in the environment.

I know I have, you know, anywhere from my own backyard to out doing some sampling, trying to track horn fly populations on cattle around the area.

So pretty much everywhere we go they are out and they're active.

One of the most common ticks we're encountering right now is the lone star tick.

That's basically what most of us think of when we think of encountering ticks in the environment.

And they're very active.

So we wanna make sure that we're taking proper preventative measures to keep ourselves from being bit by them.

So that's, whether that's doing a tick check after you come in from being outside or using maybe permethrin treated clothing to help repel those from, from climbing on you and then eventually biting you.

Those are always good things.

So as we start to come into the early summer here, another tick that we need to start being on the lookout for, particularly on the, the eastern and northeastern part of the state is the Asian longhorn tick.

So you may recall last summer that we started to see populations of this tick present in Mayes and Craig County.

And being that it's already present in Missouri and Arkansas, kind of those counties that are on the eastern border of the state from basically Sequoia County and then northward are going to be kind of our areas where we would want to be on the lookout for this new invasive tick.

For Asian longhorn ticks on our cattle.

Again, these are going to be ticks smaller than what we're normally used to seeing.

So producers need to be, you know, kind of aware and, and interacting with their cattle on, on a regular basis, inspecting them for for small ticks.

And if you remember from previous sunup segments and information on the Asian longhorn tick, the species reproduces asexually.

So we can see very, very large numbers of these ticks present on a cow in comparison to where we might only see, you know, a, a handful of something like a lone star tick present.

So things you can do to your animals to help prevent tick bites are keep them out of wooded areas or, or out of tall grass.

So if you've got brushy areas or areas with tall grass, you can either keep that mode or keep the cattle out of it.

I know we wanna provide them with shade, but you know, don't just release them into the woods because that's going to increase the likelihood that they're going to come into contact with ticks.

So to protect our cattle, we can do that environmental modification, you know, mowing, keeping the animals out a tall brush, but we could also treat the animals with a, something as simple as a synthetic pyrethroid, like even as as low as a 10% permethrin spray.

Treating them in the spring can really help kind of knock down those numbers.

But in terms of Asian longhorn tick activity across the country, we typically see their activity of the adults peak around the middle of June to early July.

So we need to be on the lookout for for them at this current time.

- That'll do it for our show for this week.

We wish you all the best of luck as you continue with harvest from the Sheer farm in Kay County.

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