Good morning, everyone.

We have a great show for you lined up today on SUNUP.

Spring has arrived.

Have the weeds followed?

Then we're talking a popular game bird in the habitat it likes to call home.

And we're talking backyard chickens and a new program designed to help producers bring their eggs to market.

We hope that coffee's done brewing because SUNUP starts right now.

Hello, everyone, and welcome to SUNUP.

I'm Kurtis Hair.

Well, the dry weather continues, so how's that impacting the weeds in the wheat field?

SUNUP's Elizabeth Hokit catches up with OSU Extension weed scientist Dr.

Liberty Galvin to find out more.

We're here now with our OSU Extension weed scientist, Dr.

Liberty Galvin.

And, Liberty, it's been a little while since we caught up with you.

Talk to us a little bit about what stage the wheat is in and kind of what that means for weeds and pests.

Sure.

So I really like using Amanda Silva's hollow stem calendar.

She does a lot of scouting and that hollow stem is when you're supposed to be pulling your cattle off if you're going to try to harvest a grain crop.

For us, weed scientists and weed managers in general, our clear field and our coaxium varieties, the latest growth stage to apply those products is jointing and shortly after hollow stem is jointing.

And I think we hit hollow stem all across the state, maybe I think it was a week or two ago.

And because of the weird warm weather that we're having, we've hit jointing almost immediately after, like within two weeks.

So that's about where we're at.

We're out spraying all of our coaxium and clear field about a week ago.

So we're nearing the crop injury scary phase of growth.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So is that across the entire state?

People are kind of getting to the point where you should probably think about not spraying anymore.

So it definitely depends on where you're at.

You know, the panhandle is a little bit cooler.

They've had much less moisture than other parts of the state.

But then more southern, they're going to be warmer than the northern part of the state.

So I definitely recommend everybody to scout and determine what stage.

But generally speaking, I, I, I trust in that hollow stem calendar.

And if all across the state, we've already hit hollow stem.

It's a very short, like one to two weeks before we had jointing.

So wherever you were a week or two ago, probably about a jointing at this point.

So let's transition a little bit now into talking about what weeds have you been seeing and kind of where are we at with that?

So this has been, you know, it's an interesting season.

Every season is an interesting season.

What I've really noticed in our experimental plots, if we were able to control the weeds in the fall, all of our plots still look really, really clean.

We have we have plots in Chickasha, in Perkins and in Lahoma.

Those environments are really different.

But none of those sites have really gotten a significant amount of moisture since the fall.

And so what I'm finding is the Italian ryegrass, the cheatgrasses, if those got well established in the fall, they are just as big, if not bigger than the wheat plants.

But I haven't seen a lot of spring, like new spring growth.

That doesn't mean it won't happen.

But if you were able to get, if you were able to get good weed control in the fall, my hope is that it still looks clean.

That won't be the case for everybody.

But yeah.

And is there anything producers can do if we happen to get a big rain and then all those weeds start sprouting up again?

So it really depends on if you're going to double crop or if you're still trying to do a graze out.

You may not be applying herbicides.

If you're going to plant soybeans later, there's rotation restrictions you need to be careful of.

A lot of those clear field and coaxium jointing, we're getting very close to that timing.

We are going to be spraying Everest in the field.

That has a 60-day pre-harvest interval.

So there's still a few products that can get used.

But I think most of our trait-based technology, those chemistries have kind of passed their due date at this point.

And we're now just hoping and praying that we don't get so much rain that we have a new crop of weedy grasses.

And are there any specific weeds that you've seen popping up or are starting to go away?

So the henbit.

I get calls about that cute little plant that's also in everybody's front yard that has the little purple flowers.

We actually get that pretty badly in wheat.

The thing with henbit is that it's actually nearing the end of its lifecycle.

So in theory, it shouldn't be competing with your wheat crop.

But the issue is that when all of that plant material dies and is decaying in the field, that can be a vector for viruses and diseases for wheat.

So it's important to, even if you don't do any weed control for that henbit, it's important to just kind of keep an eye on it because if we end up getting very wet, warm weather, plus all of that decaying plant material, that's a perfect storm for the mosaic viruses that happen in wheat.

And is there at this point any viruses that you're expecting to see?

So I haven't seen anything from my pathology colleagues.

And that's mostly because we haven't gotten a lot of moisture.

And with this little cold spell that we're having, that also isn't very conducive.

However, I have been seeing reports of green bug.

And I know Dr.

Ashley Ferris just posted a blog.

It's on the OSU NPK blog, which is Brian Arnell.

But that was just spotted, I think, in south-central Oklahoma recently.

So those bugs can also be vectors for viruses.

Right?

So if you're going to go out and scout for your weeds, make sure you're scouting for your green bugs and also your diseases.

All right.

Well, it was good talking to you, Liberty.

And thanks for getting us up to speed.

Thanks, Elizabeth.

And for a link to the resources that Liberty mentioned, just go to our website, sunup.okstate.edu.

OSU Agriculture's Field Day season is right around the corner.

First up is the Wheat and Forages Field Day at the South Central Research Station in Chickasha on April 24th from 830 to 1.

Field days are a great opportunity for the community and for producers to talk directly with extension specialists and see the research firsthand to learn how it applies to you and your operation.

If you would like more information on the event, just scan the QR code at the bottom of your screen or go to the SUNUP website.

It's that time in the show where we check in on the crop markets with our OSU Extension Crop Marketing Specialist, Dr.

Todd Hubbs.

And Todd, let's start with prices right now.

How are things looking in the state?

Well, we've seen quite a rally in the ag complex around the conflict in the Middle East.

You know, with the rise in oil prices up above $100 a barrel, we saw a lot of spillover speculation into the ag commodity complex.

Those kind of rallies are very speculative, a lot of index fund movement, and they're very fragile and quite volatile.

And we saw that on Monday of this week, just a huge sell-off in the ag complex where soybeans went limit down and everything sort of followed it.

So, yeah, we've seen a nice run-up.

We broke out of the ranges we were in all through the late fall and early part of this first quarter of 2026, but it's all sort of framed around speculative issues with maybe some inflation hedging and just general, you know, conflict issues in oil.

And talking about oil and the price of oil, how is that going to impact ag producers?

Well, diesel prices are going up and input costs across the board.

The same dynamics that are causing oil prices to go up are really impacting nitrogen fertilizer.

You know, when you cut off approximately 30% of the supply to the world that comes out of that region, supply goes down, prices go up, and we've seen a real jump in fertilizer prices and concerns about availability because it takes a long time to move these stuff around the world and there's other people that want that fertilizer as well.

And that was a market that's been pressured over the past handful of years as well when it comes to the fertilizer market as well.

We've seen run-ups and run-downs and I think a lot of people felt like they were elevated to begin with and then we get this shock and it's pretty painful on the input side.

So, you know, our producers' inputs are going up while the output prices are going up.

But I'd say we'll probably see a lot more volatility and ease on the downside from our output prices than where we'll see from our input prices.

And I bet that's a problem too where, you know, we're mid-March right now, the wheat's waking up and, you know, that's probably not a great thing for producers.

No, you know, we're looking at planting spring crops as well.

So any, like, spring fertilizer applications, if you didn't reserve your prices or your fertilizer early, you're probably going to have a tough time finding it.

And if you do find it, it's going to be very expensive.

And then there's the concern about it just being available.

And so I think we might be okay for a lot of folks, but everybody's different on a different timeline and there's going to be issues.

And you hear that talk out in the world, and it's actually coming out of Washington, D.C., which always makes me a little nervous, but there it is.

So through this volatility, you know, over the past couple of weeks, you've been asking your advice for producers, but as things keep getting more volatile, does your advice change at all?

No.

I mean, I get asked a lot about, you know, when should you sell, and timing of market's very difficult.

We have seen these run-ups and broken out of the range as we were in.

I like to say, you know, what kind of price is profitable for you?

Is there a price that you can live with on some of this crop?

I mean, the hard red wheat crop's not even on the ground.

If you're talking about selling old crop, maybe it's time to let it go, right?

If we get prices up near $6 cash when some of these rallies.

But it's just what price can you live with on some of this?

I'm a sell early, sell often kind of person.

If you get to a target price that's profitable for you.

Now, if you're not at that level, I understand, but I think folks need to realize, you know, there is hefty supply.

And really the underlying fundamentals on most of our crops haven't really changed.

So these kind of rallies, weather is still an issue, right?

West of I-35 has been dry as a bone.

You know, what is this emergence going to look like and how's the crop going to turn out for a good chunk of Oklahoma?

It's still an open question and it doesn't look like there's any rain coming anytime soon.

So I understand all that, but it's time to start thinking about what's my budget and what kind of target prices can I live with?

And, you know, if you want to push it a little bit, go ahead.

But keep your prices up to date with your elevators or whoever you're selling to.

So if it clips through that price overnight or something, you get it.

You know what I mean?

So that's the kind of idea I'm talking about.

And, you know, and I guess like kind of in a positive note, it's just control what you can control and try to just get through what you can.

Yes, control what you can and have a plan.

And that plan will probably go down in flames at some point, but it's always important to be thinking about these issues.

Alrighty, thanks, Todd.

Dr.

Todd Hubbs, OSU Extension Crop Marketing Specialist here at Oklahoma State University.

I'm Mark Turner, Wildlife Extension Specialist at OSU, and today we're going to be talking about quail in Oklahoma.

A lot of folks in Oklahoma are very interested in having quail on their property, either from a hunting perspective or just because they like seeing and hearing them across their property.

Unfortunately, quail populations across much of the U.S.

have been declining over the course of the last several decades, and most of that is related to habitat loss, especially in the eastern part of the state.

A lot of areas that previously were relatively open have been encroached by trees, as well as eastern red cedar, as well as non-native grasses.

And over time, we've just seen a decrease in habitat quality for quail, and that's led to decreased populations.

Quail in the western part of Oklahoma tend to actually be doing a little bit better.

The relatively open shrubland communities there are readily used by quail, and so certainly there are some big destinations in western Oklahoma for folks that like to quail hunt.

Now, there are still issues there related to especially eastern red cedar encroachment, as well as overgrazing.

But really, the issue in western Oklahoma tends to be more so rainfall.

For example, in a year like this previous year, we got a lot of rainfall, and that led to excellent conditions for nesting and brood rearing during the summertime, and so we had a good number of birds on the landscape.

Much of quail management focuses on increasing reproduction, both through improving nesting cover as well as brooding cover, which would be the places that the parents would take the chicks to forage and be safe from predators.

The reason that much of quail management focuses on that is because quail are relatively short-lived.

In fact, the average quail lives less than a year, and so we really need to think about consistently having more quail being produced on a property if we want to maintain or increase those populations because the adults are relatively short-lived.

When we're thinking about improving habitat for quail, generally we're thinking about having a diversity of plants and different types of plants within an area.

For example, we want some coverage of grasses.

About a third of coverage of grasses is usually pretty desirable for quail.

We also want to have some forbs that are available.

Those are going to be producing seed as well as attracting insects for both the adults as well as the chicks to forage on.

And then we also want some shrub cover.

Quail commonly are referred to as grassland birds.

That's technically not correct.

Really, they should be called shrubland birds because they really require having some shrubby, woody cover both to escape predators as well as to maintain temperature, particularly in the summertime when it gets hot.

Oftentimes, they're going to be under those shrubs in the shade.

Some of the practices that we oftentimes prescribe to increase quail habitat suitability would include things like prescribed fire to reduce woody encroachment.

We also think about potentially controlling non-native grass species as well as other non-natives that are on a property.

We can use techniques like discing to increase the number of forbs, which are herbaceous, non-woody plants.

Oftentimes, we call those weeds, things like ragweed and sunflower that come up just after you disc the sole.

We can also manipulate grazing on a property.

And so there are several techniques that you can use to increase quail habitat suitability on your property and hopefully either hear more birds or see more birds and run into more coveys while you're hunting.

For more information on quail management, check out some of the resources on the SUNUP website.

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

Our topic this week is selection for extremes and how it relates to calving ease.

When we talk about selection for extremes, we're basically saying we're identifying a trait and we're trying to select for either the maximum or minimum value of it we possibly can.

And while this always potentially leads to the greatest genetic change, if we take it too far, we can create some biological extremes that the environment tends to revolt against or maybe unlock some genetic antagonisms that aren't really good for profit potential in beef production.

So we know we've got effective tools that we can use, things like a calving ease direct EPD or a birth weight EPD that we can use as selection tools to identify bulls that are going to give us calving ease, particularly when we mate them to first calf heifers.

So the question, can selection for extremes be taken too far when it comes to calving ease?

Well, the short answer, yes.

We know that lighter birth weight calves are more likely to be born unassisted, less likely to have calving difficulty.

The flip side of that coin, there tends to be less vigor, there's higher mortality rate, and those calves don't grow as well long-term when they're extremely small at birth.

Calving ease is best thought of as a threshold trait.

When we get to the level we're trying to achieve, an unassisted birth and a vigorous calf that's up and nursing, we've reached the desired objective of selecting for calving ease.

And we want to manage and select for it accordingly when we think about that.

Nobody wants to have to pull calves.

That being said, when we think about calving out heifers, it's a prudent management practice to monitor, be there for supervision.

We know that about 5% of all calves are going to have an abnormal presentation.

There could be something come up, aside from just the size of that calf, that requires our management during calving season.

I encourage you, as you're looking for calving ease bulls right now, take a look at past production records.

Take a look at the past EPDs for things like calving ease direct and birth weight of the sires of previous calf crops, and use those things as a guide to figure out how much selection pressure to apply to calving ease as we think about identifying bulls to use on that next set of replacement heifers.

I hope this helps, and as always, thanks for joining us on Cow-Calf Corner.

Now to OSU Extension Beef Cattle Specialist Dr.

Paul Beck with some information on salt deficiencies in forage.

As we're developing a nutrition program for beef cattle, one thing to consider is it's very common for us just to provide a white salt block or a trace mineralized salt block to beef cows.

Salt is the first deficiency in all of our forages for beef cows, and universally so, and it is what drives intake of our mineral mixtures.

Those mineral programs, based on white salt or even a trace mineralized salt block, do not adequately match the nutrient deficiencies of beef cows in Oklahoma that are on any of our forage systems.

In the western Oklahoma on native range, we need to have higher calcium levels and higher phosphorus levels, along with several of the trace elements, especially focusing on copper, zinc, and selenium.

When we get into eastern Oklahoma on introduced forages, bermudagrass, we can decrease the amount of phosphorus we're feeding in these commercial mineral mixes, but calcium is always going to be needed.

Also, we need to look at all those trace elements in most of our regions.

Once again, zinc, copper, selenium are nearly universally deficient in this state.

We just want to take a break in the show to remind you about the upcoming Rancher's Thursday Lunchtime Series.

This edition will cover the tug of war in the cattle industry regarding increasing carcass weights and escalating costs with maintaining beef cows.

The next event will be Thursday, March 26th, and will cover the reasons why carcass weights will continue to increase.

If you're interested in finding out more about this series, just scan this QR code at the bottom of your screen or go to our website, sunup.okstate.edu.

There's a lot that goes into taking care of horses, including their teeth, but how do you actually do that?

Here's OSU Extension Equine Specialist, Dr.

Chris Heine.

Hi, I'm Dr.

Chris Heine with Oklahoma State University, and I'm the Equine Extension Specialist.

So I wanted to talk a little bit about dental care, because typically in the spring is the time to think about vaccinations, doing fecal exams, and maybe getting your horse's teeth checked.

And it can be extremely important for our miniatures.

So miniatures' teeth actually may be a little outsized for their skull shape, so miniatures have more teeth issues than an average horse.

So we tend to forget about these little guys sometimes, but it's more imperative that they are checked regularly, and you find a dentist with small enough tools to work in their little mouths.

Finally today, we're talking about a new program that's designed to help beginning backyard chicken producers bring their eggs to market.

The sun is up, and it's time to check on the chickens.

When you have a backyard poultry operation, mornings start early.

But for Christine Nichols, she wouldn't have it any other way.

It's really kind of two-fold.

My husband and I have always been interested in sustainability and having some kind of an income after we retire.

So we were thinking about what could we do.

He decided to do bees, I decided to do chickens.

So, in March of last year, Christine started up her own operation.

Started out with some chickens from a friend, and it just kind of grew from there.

I've always been interested in selling eggs, but probably the main reason I wanted to do this was I wanted to give back.

There's a lot that goes into starting up your own backyard chicken operation.

Having an adequate coop and solid fencing to keep out the predators can be challenges.

But when it comes to selling eggs, well, there's a whole lot of other challenges.

So, chickens hatch in 21 to 23 days, and then the chicks will go ahead and hatch on their own.

So, when I first started being interested in selling eggs or donating eggs to the food pantry, I wanted to learn about safety and how I could do that best, and legally.

And there's a lot out there, and there's a lot to read, and it was very confusing.

It seems like there's a great deal of interest in the production of shell eggs.

Brian Buchwald is a program coordinator with the Oklahoma Department of Agriculture, Food and Forestry and deals primarily with licensing of shell eggs.

He says Christine is not alone when it comes to the overwhelming nature of getting in the egg-selling business.

Well, some people aren't aware that they have to have a license to sell shell eggs in the state of Oklahoma.

In the past, when a person wants to get licensed in the state of Oklahoma, we will basically just send them a packet of information out.

So, I contacted USDA and asked them, you know, Oklahoma and ODAF, and asked them, what could I do to make this a little easier, because this stuff's really dense.

You know, the laws are not made for everyday people.

And they said, we have a new class, and I said, oh, this is awesome.

Recently, ODAF partnered with OSU Extension to release a new online course designed specifically to assist aspiring producers like Christine work through these challenges.

Basically, sometimes they just don't have the knowledge, as far as the cleaning and the grading and the packing of the egg.

This course that we developed was really designed and intended to support all egg producers, but really those beginning folks who are wanting to sell eggs for the first time and help them understand some of the regulations that the state of Oklahoma has around selling eggs.

Josh Campbell is the Beginning Farmer and Rancher Program Coordinator at OSU and helped design the course.

The new course is called Selling Eggs in Oklahoma, and it covers everything from the beginning stages of harvesting eggs off of your farm and the safe care and handling everything from washing and packing them up to actually taking them to market.

I didn't expect that the cleaning process for the eggs would be so kind of time intensive, because not only do you have to wash them in a special detergent and then put them in a container that has like a bleach solution and lets them dry, you have to also candle them and make sure that they're appropriate for the consumer, that they have the right amount of an air sac, that they have the right type of yolk.

And all of that can be a little bit overwhelming at first, but luckily the class broke it down to me so I can understand it.

Christine's production is not quite ready for market, but will be soon, and she says this whole experience has been rewarding.

Oh, absolutely.

It's wonderful to see the kids out here with the chickens and helping to collect eggs, and they're always asking as soon as they get here, can we go get eggs, Grandma, can we go get eggs?

And just having them be able to grow up with that experience, all my grandchildren live in town, so coming out to the farm is just really a rewarding experience for them.

In Payne County, I'm Kurtis Hair.

And that about wraps it up for us today.

Now remember, if you saw something on the show that you'd like, just visit our website, sunup.okstate.edu, or follow us on YouTube and social media.

And we leave you today with some more footage of backyard chickens.

I'm Kurtis Hair, and remember, Oklahoma agriculture starts at SUNUP.