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

I'm Lyndall Stout.

We begin today talking about the recent wildfires that devastated parts of Western Oklahoma.

As we learned during a trip last week to Ellis County, it will likely take years to recover.

(plane rattling) Flying a few thousand feet over the scarred landscape of Western Oklahoma, OSU Agriculture Vice President and Dean Jayson Lusk now has a unique perspective as he meets Extension educator Dana Bay.

- Welcome to Gage.

- Dana.

Yeah, thanks for having me.

- You bet.

You bet.

- [Lyndall] And Emergency Management Director Riley Latta.

- We're coordinating with all them, with all the other organizations who are trying the Cattleman's Association, local businesses that we've got here that are helping coordinate the donations coming in for whether that be feed for livestock or clothing and things of that nature where the individuals lost their homes, and now we're down to paperwork and trying to help people get situated so we can get prepared to move forward with our lives, and obviously be prepared here for the next few months on producer-wise getting stuff resituated for cattle, livestock and where they're gonna go and how they're gonna keep them fed until we can get some rain.

- [Lyndall] The view from the air shows the scope of the fires, but it takes a conversation on the ground to truly understand what producers and landowners are dealing with.

- Over 26,000 acres impacted.

What I'm basically been, I'm the milkman.

- Okay.

- So I'm delivering powdered milk various places- - In OSU Extension, we really pride ourselves for being engaged in every county and community around the state.

And when our counties are in need, it's one of our responsibilities to be engaged, and we have people out here in Western Oklahoma that have experienced a lot of damage from the fire and our county educators are intimately involved in trying to help respond and get our farming and ranching families back up to speed.

So to come out here and see what's happening, see where the needs are, I think it's just an important part of our job and responsibility in OSU Extension.

- Give us an idea of what you saw from the air this morning.

- So I had the chance to fly over the Texas Panhandle, part of Western Oklahoma and the Oklahoma Panhandle, and you know, one of the things you can tell from the air is just the immensity of the damage.

Tens of thousands of acres have been burned.

You can see homes that are destroyed and cities that were almost taken out.

And it really shows you the scale of the damage and the immensity of the need that many farmers and ranchers have in this area.

- You have talked to both Dana and Lauren briefly, but talk about the significance of the county extension educator being in the community and just being a part of what people need, you know, now and well into the future for the recovery efforts.

- Yeah, so our county educators are embedded in the communities in which they live.

And so when a disaster like this happens, they're the people that the community turns to for information, for advice.

And so what we see in Ellis County and Beaver County is our county educators are the people that are coordinating a lot of the relief efforts, whether it's coordinating the donations of hay or feed, or trying to provide emergency response for people that have lost their homes or just to answer questions about what can we do.

Our county educators are really at the heart of those efforts to help people get back on their feet.

- [Lyndall] Just a few weeks ago, dormant grass hugged these Western Oklahoma hills.

Now the high winds have carried the charred black remnants of grass away and it looks like someplace else entirely.

- Oklahoma, there's just, I have 150,000 acres that burned between three counties and on the very western side of the state.

We know in Ellis County, I have nine families that lost their home that they were living in.

And we lost so much grass in this county.

So many fences burned that we've had a hard time, you know, keeping livestock in that are still alive because there's no fence left around them.

So producers are having to more or less keep feet in front of them so that they don't wander off.

- Unfortunately, we've talked to you out here before after a fire.

When we look back at 2018 to where we are now, what have you learned, and how are things different this time around?

- That was my first involvement with any disaster of any size like that.

And, I mean, it was overwhelming.

It was a slap in the face with reality and it was all-consuming.

This time, you know, unfortunately, I have a better understanding of how to manage those donations, how to help people better, I think, you know, and how to deal with not only the donations and things, but I saw what those producers went through afterwards and I saw some of the issues that they dealt with personally, whether that was, you know, family issues or mental health issues or things like that.

And I think maybe now I'm better prepared to help producers now maybe stave off some of that thing, some of those things from being a problem in the future.

It can be overwhelming, but it's also overwhelming the amount of response and.

- [Oklahoman] It's heartwarming.

It's humbling to see the way that people have responded.

It restores your faith in humanity.

- [Lyndall] The response to the call for donations has been tremendous.

But in that typical Oklahoma spirit, always thinking of others, means many are thinking of themselves last.

- The farming and ranching community is a humble community, and they don't, I'm sorry, they don't like to be in a position to where they have to take something.

You know, they want to be the one that's providing.

They're the givers, and so they don't to be on the receiving end of that.

But the people have responded from all across the United States and especially, you know, local areas, Oklahoma, Texas, I mean, Kansas.

Those donations are pouring in.

And those producers that need it, I mean, they need to take it.

You know, you just, I don't know.

It's humbling to see the communities come together because a disaster catastrophe such as this brings people together.

It really does.

- We have a link for you to donation information at sunup.okstate.edu as as well as information on OSU Extension Farm Stress Resources.

If you or someone you know is struggling during this very difficult time, be sure to reach out, call or text anytime, Oklahoma's Mental Health Helpline by dialing 988.

(birds chirping) (upbeat music) - We're here with Derrell now to talk about the livestock markets.

So Derrell, the USDA just released the 2022 Census of Agriculture.

So what did that tell us about the number of farms with beef cows?

- Yeah, so the, the latest Census of Ag, which is our most complete picture of US agriculture, showed that there were a little over 622,000 farms that had beef cows at the end of 2022.

And if you look at the distribution of those farms by herd size, about 80% of all those farms have less than 50 cows.

In fact, the US average herd size was 47 cows in 2022.

At the other end of the spectrum, the number of farms that have more than 1,000 head of cows represented just 0.3% of all of the farms.

- So what did this tell us about the number and the distribution of cow inventory by herd size?

- Yeah, so if you look across all those farms, those 80% of the farms that have less than 50 cows have about 25% of all the cows.

At the other end, those farms, that 0.3% that have more than 1,000 head, have almost 10% of the cows.

And then of course, the other categories in between, from 50 to 100, 100 to 200, and, you know, 200 to 500 and so on, make up the majority of the cattle in the middle.

- So when we're looking at these two different statistics in this 2022 Census, how has this changed from the last one or over time?

- You know, I compared the latest census to 20 years ago, so the 2002 census, and of course, if you look at that, the number of farms total in the US has gone down, and that's certainly true of farms with beef cows.

It's gone down about 21, almost 22% over that time period.

The number of cows in herds of 500 head or more has increased over time.

And so even though the percentage of those farms that make up that 80% less than 50 head is the same.

It hasn't really changed over time.

But there are more cows in the bigger herd size categories at this point.

- So how do the Oklahoma farms and herd sizes compare to those national numbers?

- You know, Oklahoma is really pretty similar to the national trend in a lot of ways.

We've seen a decrease in our farms over time, about 22%.

The average herd size in Oklahoma did increase over that 20-year period from just over 40 cows to over 51 cows.

And if you look in both nationally and Oklahoma, all of the herd categories from 200 cows and larger herd sizes, 200 cows and larger, got bigger.

And so that's, you know, kind of a national trend, and it's kind of the nature of the industry where farms have to get a little bit bigger to be viable economically, and we've certainly seen that.

- So what's the big takeaway for producers from this census?

- Well, this is a snapshot over time.

I think, you know, in some ways, there weren't a lot of surprises in this, but it does show the continued evolution of the industry.

I think the fact that those bigger herds have gotten bigger in terms of the number of cows represented in those does indicate some of the economic challenges that producers face.

Some of these, you know, herds of a 50 to 100 to maybe up to 200 really face a lot of challenges.

If that's intended to be a full-time or a complete operation, that may not be enough to make it work, and so there's some pressure for those herds to get bigger over time.

- All right, well, thanks for updating us, Derrell.

Derrell Peele, Livestock Marketing Specialist here at Oklahoma State University.

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

This week's topic involves what we can do to improve the profitability, the efficiency, and the sustainability of commercial cow-calf operations.

And two big components to that are to reduce our feed costs relative to improving the amount of weight weaned by cows over their productive lifetime.

And so we address mature weight and that cumulative weaning weight of calves.

And we know that reducing mature weight is gonna have a favorable impact on feed costs, and cumulative weight weaned, or the total amount of pounds of calf wean over the cow's lifetime is gonna be the result of cows, that each year, calve earlier in the calving season, wean off a healthier calf, and avoid ever being cold as a result of bad temperament, reproductive failure, or some sort of unsoundness.

And so we address the role of selection and mating decisions and how they can contribute to trying to accomplish these two things to create profit potential.

First, we address mature weight.

Quite a few estimates from scientific literature indicate that mature weight in cows is highly heritable, up into the range that we would think of relative to marbling heritabilities, rib-eye heritabilities, or carcass traits that we know are highly heritable.

The mature weight of cows has a similar heritability.

The good news part of that story, we have a lot of additive genetic control, meaning that through sire selection, if we put some selection pressure on a mature weight EPD, we're gonna be able to change or potentially lower that mature weight of cows.

Now, fertility on the other hand, is not under a lot of additive genetic influence, but it is under a lot of genetic influence in the form of non additive genetic merit or gene combination value.

How do we get gene combination value?

As a result of a mating decision that we make when we crossbreed.

When we crossbreed, we combine the alleles from two or more breeds at loci across the genome of that crossbred calf, and we get the biological phenomenon that we call hybrid vigor or heterosis.

In the end, fertility is largely influenced by non-additive genetic merit and the nutritional environment of our cows.

So how can we improve it?

Through crossbreeding.

Quite a bit of scientific literature shows a huge bump in the total pounds of calves weaned over the lifetime of a cow as a result of crossbreeding systems, some estimates of up to 25% increase, and at least half of that is a result of heterosis in that crossbred cow that contributes to her fertility, her reproductive fitness, her longevity and production.

And so can we improve reducing mature cow size and the total pounds of calves weaned simultaneously?

You bet, as a result of putting some selection pressure in the right place in sire selection, and a well-planned, well-designed crossbreeding system, we can manage to improve that total pounds of calf wean and give cows a little more longevity in their lifetime of production.

Final thought on this, crossbreeding does require a high level of management.

We've gotta consider what breeds we wanna include in it, and we need to apply selection pressure in those breeds same way as we would if we were talking about straight bred animals.

The additive genetic merit of those sires that we're gonna bring into the cross-breeding system is what equates to a higher level of performance in the calves, and it's that that we build off of to get that hybrid vigor.

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

- [Announcer] Donation efforts are underway for those affected by the wildfires.

In addition to monetary support, supplies are needed to help injured animals as well as orphan calves and provide feed, hay, fencing supplies, salt and minerals, and much more.

If you would like to give financially or drop off supplies, we've rounded up several ways to do that via the Oklahoma Cattlemen's Association and through local contacts in the affected counties.

We have a link for you with all the information at sunup.okstate.edu.

(upbeat music) We're talking crop prices with Dr. Kim Anderson, our grain marketing specialist, and Kim, has there been much movement lately with prices?

- There hasn't been much movement at all in crop prices over the last couple weeks or maybe even over the last month.

- I know a lot of people are wondering why.

- Well, there's just not anything going on right now.

We've got the winter wheat crop, it's all planted.

It's in relatively good condition, both in the United States and around the world.

We've got the corn and soybeans, summer crop plantings coming up, but again, moisture's relatively good around.

I think the market feels like they've got a good handle on things in the U.S. and the world, and there's just not much happening.

- Spring is officially here now, what reports may be upcoming soon that could have some impact on prices?

- Well, the report that the entire market's waiting on is the Perspective Plannings Report, that'll be released next Thursday on March the 28th.

- It'll have the estimates for all the summer crops and including spring wheat.

And it'll have pretty much the final planting estimates for your hard red winter and soft red winter wheat.

So that's a big report.

And then you've got the quarterly stocks report that the market always watched, 'cause that tells us how much product we got in the bin or in storage.

- What are you keeping a close eye on?

- Well, right now I'm watching harvest prices.

Pretty much all our wheat from '23, corn beans, everything's pretty much been sold.

So I'm watching harvest prices.

You look at wheat right now, we talk about it moving sideways.

It's been moving from about $5 to $5 and 50 cents, five and a quarter right now, right in the middle.

But you look at the stocks to use as averages, world and US, both right at average.

So you'd think our prices would be around $5 and 80 cents for harvest delivery.

Right now it's right at five and a quarter.

- Let's take a look now at some of the other crops.

- Corn, you got the average price for corn 4.80.

It's been watering around $4 and 40 to $4 and 50 cents, a 10 cent range there.

That's nothing, right at 4.45 now.

The average stocks use ratio for corn is below average.

So you'd expect prices down in this range.

With soybeans, you can forward contract for $11 and 10 cents.

It's been going in a range from 11 to 11 and a quarter, not hardly any range at all for beans.

You look at the stocks to use ratio for beans, it's above average for the world and about average for the US.

So you'd expect prices to be a little bit below average for beans.

Cotton, you look at that December contract, it's watering there around 83 cents.

That gives you an implied harvest price around 79 to 80 in Oklahoma.

- Taking a look at all this information, what kind of guidance do you have for producers in using these numbers?

- Well, I think use them for planting purposes.

The best predictor of the harvest price is the forward contract price.

That's what the market's betting on.

So use the wheat forward contract price for developing your marketing plan, use your corn beans, cotton, sorghum prices, forward contracts for you to determine what you're gonna use this land labor, capital, and management for.

Okay, Kim, thanks a lot.

We'll see you next week.

(cheerful music) - This time of year you might see trees that have really bright white, showy flowers.

This is a species called callery pear.

And locally we have a lot of what's called a cultivar of Bradford pear.

This was a species that was brought over from China in the early 1900s, and the emphasis was to try to find a species that was less susceptible to native fire blight on pear trees.

This is a species that we're concerned with because of its aggressive invasive nature.

So originally, it was thought that this cultivar of callery pear, Bradford pear here could not produce viable offspring.

Well, after enough time, we've learned that it can produce viable offspring and now it's aggressively spreading in native habitats throughout Oklahoma.

So callery pear or Bradford pear can have a lot of nice traits that landowners want on their property.

So it can have really bright white, showy flowers.

And in the fall, often you'll get a bright red foliage that's a really pretty fall color.

Problems with the callery pear include it can have substantial thorns, of course, it spreads aggressively, it can out compete native species, and you'll often see it in old fields or even in woodlands, filling in gaps left by other native tree species.

So some more negatives to callery pear include the offensive odor that comes from these trees.

Also, you'll find these trees often in landscape settings, in large parking lots around malls.

And what can happen with those, they'll be good cover for birds later in the summer months when it gets hot.

And a lot of birds in these trees will lead to a lot of defecation on cars in those parking lots.

So certainly a lot of negatives to, again, a non-native invasive tree species.

So some ways you can take care of callery pear.

Of course, a lot of people don't wanna cut down a beautiful landscaped tree, but you might consider replacing it with something native, like red bud or a native pear species.

Callery pear has become so aggressive and invasive that in some states, in some cities, there are buyback programs for an incentive to cut down a callery pear tree and replace it with something native.

Some states have gone as far as trying to outlaw these trees and try to provide incentives again for homeowners to replace them with something else, and for nurseries to stop stocking this particular cultivar.

For more information on Bradford pear, go to the Sunup website.

- Finally today, Sunup's Elizabeth Hokit and our intern, Jamie Driscoll, take us to Oklahoma City to check out this year's Oklahoma Youth Expo.

- This week and last week was OYE.

It's the Oklahoma Youth Expo.

It's the largest junior livestock show in the world.

And we all come, and we show all of our species.

This is what we work for all year long, just to come show and present our animals.

- I've been showing since my third grade year, and that would be two, three years.

So we practice all year, mainly for up here, but there's, of course, a lot of other shows that are really fun.

But this one is the funnest because, I mean, there's so many people here, and even if you make it up the big ring, you're like, "Whoa, I just did something great."

- I've been coming to OYE since I first started showing in the eighth grade.

So I've just, it's kind of like a routine at this point.

This is my vacation, really, honestly.

So I just, I come here every year.

OYE is showing all of our hard work finally pay off.

Those late night barn cleanings, early show mornings, and late if you have an ag teacher that makes you wake up super early.

It's really just showing off all the hard work that you put into this program and your animals.

- Before we get here, it's just walking and just getting the animals prepared.

And then once we get here, we usually disinfect everything, like the stalls, and then we bring all of our animals in and all of our tack, and it's just a full day of just getting everything settled in, and 'cause you wanna get those animals acclimated and used to the environment.

And then you have your show days, where you're just prepping 'em and getting 'em ready, conditioning 'em, getting the skin and hair just perfect and everything just right, just so you can show 'em.

- [Jacee] Most people go to Florida and are at the beach, and we're in pig barns.

(crowd chattering) (pigs squealing) - These youth spend hours with their livestock.

They learn what to feed, they learn to exercise, they learn what qualities of the animal are the best.

They learn to promote their project through their local clubs and local FFA chapters.

- It kind of teaches responsibility of knowing when your class is, knowing where you need to be at what time, knowing when to feed your animal, and also kind of playing parts back and forth.

- [Jim] Most of them have a relationship with their extension educators, and so they get help feeding and fitting and learning how to clip and how to get ready for the show.

- For me to be here at OYE, it's just getting to represent Oklahoma and just to represent the swine industry and just to be able to present our animals at the highest degree.

- When you win big, it's easy to be super excited and stuff, and so it teaches you to gracefully accept that, and it also humbles you because there's been many, many times in the sniff ring for me.

- OYE isn't just for the kids, it's also for the breeders and just livestock in general.

- This is something that has changed my life for the better, and I want to be a part of it for as long as I can.

(lighthearted music) - And that'll do it for our show this week.

As we leave you, we wanna send a big congratulations to Reed Marcum of Pittsburgh County, who was recently featured on Sunup for his extraordinary dedication to serving others.

Reed recently traveled to Washington, DC to accept his National 4H Youth in Action Award, one of only a handful given each year.

From all of us here at Sunup, congratulations Reed.

Hands down, you earned it.

Have a great week everyone, and we'll see you next time at Sunup.

(lighthearted music) (lighthearted music continues)