(upbeat music) - Hello everyone.

And welcome to SUNUP.

I'm Lyndall Stout.

We have a lot for you, as usual, on this week's show, including Kim Anderson, with the latest on how the situation in Ukraine is impacting crop prices.

We'll have more on that in just a moment.

But first, we're talking about horses.

(lighthearted music) - Hi, I'm Dr. Kris Hiney.

The Equine Extension Specialist for Oklahoma state university.

And today we're actually just gonna break down the difference between what a snaffle bit is, and a curb bit.

Because they're often very confused in horse owners.

When we're talking about a snaffle bit, it is something that always works via direct rein pressure.

So essentially, the reins are gonna be attached to the rings that are attached to our bridles mouthpiece, or our bits mouthpiece.

It does not actually matter if we have a joint in the middle or not.

Although we tend to think about these, traditionally, as a snaffle bit always having this jointed mouthpiece.

But the difference began between a snaffle and a curb bridle is that this bridle is gonna work via direct pressure.

Me just pulling on that rein.

And there's no leverage involved.

Now we're gonna contrast that with something that people often misidentify as a snaffle bit.

So this bridle here is, yes, we have a broken mouthpiece, just like we did on our snaffle bit, but you can see here, we actually have shanks.

And so, the shanks are what actually provides the leverage or increases the amount of signal this getting when the rider pulls on the reins.

So what makes a curb bridle, a curb bridle?

Essentially, we've got some sort of a longer piece of metal that the reins are attached separately from this point right here at the mouthpiece.

So this is essentially, a very simple curb bridle.

So generally, we think about curb bridle ridden on a horse that's a little bit more advanced in their training.

When they're young, just getting started, we always put them in essentially hackamores or snaffle bits that we're just using direct rein pressure.

This curb bridle is a little bit more intense because the horse is gonna feel this through different parts of their face, essentially.

So a curb bridle, another really, really essential feature, is that there's always a curb chain or a curb strap.

Now often we'll see that people might even put this together wrong and attach their curb strap to where the bit piece is on this bridle.

Yes, there's a ring here.

But that is not where the curb strap actually goes.

And we can actually affect how much severity or how quickly the horse feels that bit pressure by even adjusting our curb strap.

So we can do quite a bit to vary how severe a bit is by changing our curb strap, making it wider, making it tighter, changing the length of the curb bridle, changing the length of the shanks and then having different mouthpieces that you traditionally think of as more solid mouthpiece, ported bits, et cetera.

So all of these will actually affect what that horse is feeling, when you're pulling on those reins.

Here's actually another example of a really, really simple curb bridle.

If we compare to the last one I had, this one is even less severe because we have a very curved mouthpiece.

So it fits over the horse's tongue really easily.

And it has really pretty short shanks that are also swept back.

So all of these little modifications can make a bit more or less severe.

So how do you know what bit to actually choose?

You wanna use one that makes your horse comfortable.

So if a horse is really fussing or fighting with the bridle, gape in their mouth, that's probably a sign that either, it might be too much for that horse, it may not actually fit in their mouth and you may have to adjust the bridle itself or choose a different bit for the horse.

We always wanna use, essentially, the least amount of bridle that we need.

Otherwise we get dull horses and often, unhappy horses.

So we don't ever just reach for a stronger bit.

If something's going wrong, you usually wanna think about is there any underlying issues the horse has.

Or certainly look at your training before just advancing up in bit severity.

- And a reminder, you can find the latest equine information anytime on Dr. Hiney's podcast.

We have a link for you at sunup.okstate.edu.

(lighthearted music) - So the springtime is probably my most exciting time of the year, especially being a sheep owner.

I really enjoy the newborn lambs and watching them as they grow on the farm.

You know, probably the two most common reasons that we lose baby lambs is one, dystocia.

And the second is, these lambs fail to thrive because of either the environment.

- Mother doesn't take care of 'em or they starve to death.

A lamb lives in this ideal environment where it's controlled temperature, it's supplied with all of its nutrients that it needs to survive.

And then one day it gets evicted out into his real world.

And the moment it's placed in this real world, it has to call in its body reserves, to warm its body up.

It's gotta stand up and it's gotta find a meal.

And if it can't get that done in a specific certain amount of time, then it's going to die.

Now, what, as we as shepherds, what can we do to make that transition smoother?

Well, one of the first things we can do, is make sure that our ewes are in a good body condition.

A body condition score of three to three and a half out of five is probably the best.

We don't want 'em too fat, we'll have issues with health, such as pregnancy toxemia.

We definitely don't want 'em too small, or they won't give that lamb the necessary nourishment that it needs once it's born.

Ewes are in that body condition score are much more likely to have a speedy, easy lambing.

The other thing that they will do is they will provide more milk and more colostrum to the lamb.

The second thing we need to do is make sure we provide a good place for those ewes to lamb.

It needs to be protected from the elements, it should be dry.

It should be a space where that mother can bond with her lamb, that she can groom it, take care of it.

They can get used to each other so that they will stick together.

We don't want it too crowded, that creates problems for the ewe and the lamb.

So make sure you got that good place for that lamb to be born.

Another concern is lambs have to get up and nurse.

So we'd like a lamb at least up in about 30 minutes and attempting to find its meal.

By two hours we wanna make sure that it's nursed, if it hasn't, we need to intervene.

Watch out for those real tiny lambs, they may need some extra help.

Or if you have a very large lamb, you may need to provide some extra help with them.

Be sure and dip those navels to prevent diseases.

Last thing, those first 24 hours are critical, you gotta make sure those lambs are nursing.

We don't want 'em to get cold, if they get too cold, they're gonna lay on the ground, they're not gonna get up and nurse, the next thing you're gonna have is hypothermia.

So you got that low blood sugar and low body temperature and that's gonna spell disaster.

Hope that all of you out there will have twins or triplets with their ewes.

If you'd like some more information about lambing, if you'll go to sunup.okstate.ed.

(upbeat music) - Welcome to the Mesonet weather report, I'm Wes Lee.

Last week was a wonderful taste of spring with beautiful weather.

The only thing nicer would've been some strong thunderstorms dropping rain in our parched Western counties.

As has been the case for a while, rainfall continued to be very limited in the west.

This seven day rainfall map illustrates more melting sleet than accumulated rainfall.

Rainfall was limited to the Eastern tier of counties while the central and Southwestern counties we see varying amounts of sleet.

The good news is that as the sleet slowly melted it all made its way into the soil profile.

The bad news is the dry Northwest received nothing again.

This is highlighted by our map of days since a quarter inch of rain has fallen.

As of the first of the month, it has been four to six month for some of our mesonate sites since a substantial rain was received.

Soil moisture maps continue to look like almost two separate states with the east looking very good, and the west extremely dry.

This map shows the sensor at the 10 inch depth, green being moist and yellow and red being dry.

Next week has some promise of a little help.

The national weather service forecast map shows most of the state with above normal chances of rain.

Now here's Gary focusing on longer term rainfall maps.

- Thanks, Wes, and good morning everyone.

Well, another week another winter storm.

And some people were winters and some were losers in the precipitation department.

Actually, if you like to drive on ice, everybody was a winner 'cause we were definitely slipping and sliding with this one that was almost all sleet.

But we're really concerned about how does this impact the drought monitor.

Let's get right to the new map and see where we're at.

Well, despite the one to two inches of sleet across much of the Southeastern half the state, we still have very little improvement.

And we did stave off some of the worsening or the intensification of the drought, but we did see again, as I said, a little bit of improvement over in east central, Oklahoma.

And again, the far Eastern parts of the state are where they're in at least decent shape going into spring as we start the spring months here on March 1st.

So March, April, May are the chronological spring months.

That's how we track it in the weather business.

Let's take a look back at winter real quickly.

However, the precipitation totals.

This is why far Eastern Oklahoma is in decent shape and the rest of the state is really hurting.

Take a look at the percent of normal rainfall map for the winter months, December, January, February.

And again, we see much of the Northwestern half the state, less than 50% of normal rainfall.

- [Narrator] And that also bleeds down into parts of East Central Oklahoma and down into South Central Oklahoma.

So that's why we had such an increase in the Drought Monitor over the last four to five months, winter really let us down.

We can take a look at the outlooks for the month of March from the Climate Prediction Center.

Let's take a look at temperatures, we see increased odds of above-normal temperatures across the entire state.

But especially, across the main body state just a little bit less of those greater chances in the panhandle.

The Precipitation Outlook looks good for the eastern half of the state at least, a little bit of slightly increased odds of above-normal precipitation out across western Oklahoma.

However, the western half basically equal chances up above, below, or near-normal precipitation amounts for March.

It's not our wettest month.

But if we get close to normal, that would certainly help prevent some of that drought from spreading and intensifying.

And finally the March outlook for drought from the Climate Prediction Center.

Unfortunately, they see drought persisting where it already exists through the end of the month, except for the far southeastern parts of the state where a little bit of improvement is expected.

They have been getting the better rainfall amounts, so a little bit better news for those folks down in that area.

So we are in climatological spraying.

Now, we just have to hope that we get some decent rainfall amounts during this spring season.

That's it for this time.

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

(relaxing music) - [Woman] Dr. Kim Anderson, our crop marketing specialist joins us now.

Kim, all eyes are on Ukraine.

And of course, some of the potential impact that could happen on agriculture.

Let's talk about grain and cotton prices and how those may have changed in the past few days.

- Well, the big impacts been on wheat prices.

Wheat stocks were already tight.

Our world production was 28.2 billion bushels, but we're using 29 billion.

Stocks were going down because of COVID, we came into this with some countries hoarding stocks, and so, we had a shortage of wheat already.

And then on February 20 and 21, in Oklahoma, our price was right at $8 a bushel.

This morning, it was at $10.45.

That's a $2.45 cent price increase for the price of wheat in Oklahoma.

You look at corn, we come into corn with it again with tight stocks and we can go through world production and use and all of that, but stocks were relatively tight around the world.

Ukraine does export some corn, our price was at $6.50 a bushel.

It's up to $7.22, a 72 cent price increase.

Not as big a price increase with corn, as with wheat, but relatively good.

The soybean prices, they were actually down yesterday.

So you've seen a minor increase in soybean prices, but not much, and in the other grains.

Of course, a grain (mumbles) goes up with corn prices.

- [Woman] Let's talk about why there's a bigger impact on wheat prices than some of those other crops.

- Well let's start with corn, we got a 72 cent price increase there because if you look at the exports coming out of the Black Sea.

Only 2% of the world's corn exports come out of the Black Sea and they come from Ukraine.

So that's a very small percentage in reduction of exports, of corn around the world.

But it's at the margin, so it is significant.

You look at the soybeans, no exports for your soybeans and your other commodities, including sorghum coming out of the Black Sea.

So we had less of a price increase with the other commodities except for wheat and we got that $2 and what $2.50 price increase in the last couple of weeks.

You look at Kazakhstan and that's a country we're ignoring.

But they export 6% of the world's wheat exports, they produce 5% of world production.

So you've got Ukraine 14% of the exports, Russia 27% of the exports, Kazakhstan, the Black Sea is shutdown.

That's 47% of the bread flour wheat supply cut off from the United States or from the world.

You've got production of the Ukraine, 15% of the world's bread flour production, Russia at 34%, Kazakhstan at 5%.

That's 54% of the world's bread flour production that may not hit the market as we get into our harvest.

Therefore, you had a dramatically higher impact on wheat prices than the other commodities.

- [Woman] Are agricultural producers starting to take advantage of these price increases.

- [Kim] I don't think so.

Right now, especially in Oklahoma, most of our wheat areas in severe drought.

So we've got the price risk.

We don't know how long that's going to go up.

You can go back to 2008, in February 2008, the price of wheat in Oklahoma was $9.

Stocks were tight.

We had a drought situation, a situation of shortage around the world.

Wheat prices, as we got into April, got up to $12.61.

But now the time we got back to harvest, wheat prices were back down around $7.50 or $8.

And as you go on down into the year.

- Of 2008, they stayed around that 7.50 to eight, and later on, moved on down into the five.

So we don't know how long these prices are gonna stay up.

85 to 90% of our wheat's been sold.

So we can't sell last year's crop.

And we've got the yield risk because of the drought, so we don't know how much we can sell at these higher prices.

And we don't know how high prices are gonna go.

If the Black Sea stays shut down, $12 may be a low price.

- Wow.

That is in, I mean, that's incredible.

I wanna make sure I'm hearing you right.

$12 wheat is a possibility.

- You take 54% of the bread, flour, wheat, off the world market, you just don't know where prices are gonna go.

- Sure.

So are you saying that producers should not take advantage of these higher prices, or just kinda let's see how it plays out?

- If they haven't forward contracted any wheat, I think, yeah, go ahead and take some, 'cause you know you're gonna produce some wheat.

However, if we lose our crop, our price is gonna stay high and gonna go up.

And if the Black Sea situation is not settled, we know they're gonna be higher than now.

However, if that war ends, if they clean things up, Ukraine and Russia and Kazakhstan harvest their wheat and get it on the market, it's gonna come down relatively fast.

However, remember, we started out with tight stocks and that, no matter what happens there, we're gonna have tight stocks as we're into June, July, and August.

And so our prices are gonna be relatively high.

They just might not be up at 12 or $14.

- Kim, I'll be honest.

It kind of gives me some butterflies in my stomach.

(chuckling) What else should producers be concerned about?

I mean, this is enough, but is there something else they should be thinking about as well?

- Well, you look on the surface, producers are, if they can harvest some wheat, they're looking at bringing in some big money.

I mean big money.

However, Russia is a major exporter of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium fertilizers.

If we can't get, and those prices are going to go up now.

Fortunately the winter wheat, most of the fertilizer, the top dressing is done.

There will be some coming on.

The summer crops, it's gonna hit those costs of production hard, irrespective of what happens over there.

And so the input costs are gonna be higher.

So they're not, I think they're gonna make money at these prices, but they're not gonna make as much as it looks like on the surface.

- Lots of information, Kim.

We appreciate your perspective, and we'll look forward to seeing you again next week.

(upbeat music) - Good morning, Oklahoma.

Welcome to Cow-Calf Corner, and thanks for joining us.

This week's topic is how do genetic values and the information we might find in a bull sale catalog actually pertain to our own breeding operation, and what has got the most value to us?

Each bull that we consider using in our operation, we need to look at as an investment in genetics.

And for all the genetic predictors, the EPDs, and the dollar values that are out there, there's a certain amount of them that are gonna have the most economic bearing in our particular operation.

I always talk about going through several steps that help us to answer some of these questions.

First is we want to take a look, and actually measure, the current levels of performance that go on in our herd.

It can be everything from what is our mature cow size?

What is the percentage of our exposed females that are getting bred, actually weaning off a calf?

Are we pulling too many calves or having to offer assistance on the bulls we're using on our first calf heifers?

What are our weaning weights, our yearling weights?

What is the finished weight or carcass weight of fed cattle?

Carcass quality grades, yield grades, all things that we need to measure in order to decide where we need to make improvement, and what particularly needs to be changed.

Second to that, and all these things definitely relate to one another.

But second to that, we wanna take a look at when we're actually gonna market calves.

Are we selling calves at weaning?

Are we selling yearlings?

Are we selling finished cattle, or are we a replacement heifer operation?

That says our primary profit center is selling replacement females.

Answering that, back to that current level of herd performance is gonna shed more light on where we need to invest in genetics.

Third thing, are we using bulls as terminal sires, or are we gonna be keeping daughters out of those as our next set of replacements in the cow herd?

Fourth thing that we take a look at is what are the EPDs and genetic values of the bulls we have been using that have resulted in this level of performance?

I always say, EPDs are comparable across time and geography.

What that means to us is that virtually all beef breed associations have got a pedigree look up feature that if we can take the registration paper of the bulls we've been using and look those up in our respective breed registry, we can take a look at the current genetic values of those bulls and relate it back to that current level of cow herd performance that we're seeing.

That helps us a lot in deciding what we need to select for in the next generation.

And that kind of leads to our final step, identifying where we wanna make change.

- What traits are most economically important to us?

And do we need to change something for the sake of increasing a level of performance?

Do we need to change something to maybe gain efficiencies in our overall production system?

An example that could be if we want to raise our weaning weight that's increasing a level of performance, but perhaps we want to select to reduce our mature cow herd size, in some of these bulls, we're gonna keep daughters out of if we kept weaning weight the same and reduced our mature cow herd size over time we'd actually be gaining some efficiency and seeing cows weaning off a higher percentage of their mature weight, in that next generation.

So, as I always say, there's many layers to this onion and taking a look at several things, current level of performance, how we're gonna market calves, are bulls gonna be terminal sires or rotational sires, actually taking inventory of the genetic values of those bulls that have been siring the calves we're selling and that cow herd that we have on hand, helps us to identify the traits we wanna select for and specifically what direction we want to go and where we're gonna apply selection pressure in that next bull or set of bulls that we purchase to use in our operation.

Thanks for joining us this week on cow calf corner.

(instrumental country music) - Finally today, accolades in the form of a national award for the Oklahoma 4-H and Farm Bureau, ATV safety training program.

We take you to Guthrie to learn more.

Engines rev, riders are ready and just like that life saving safety lessons get underway.

- Oklahoma is ranked the fifth highest in ATV deaths.

And so we generally average about 25 deaths per year on ATVs.

And so when you think about death and injury, that's why the program got started.

- [Reporter] Training at the two year old ATV safety facility, is hitting its stride.

A partnership between Oklahoma 4-H and Oklahoma Farm Bureau.

- And we came up with the plan that we would certify three Oklahoma Farm Bureau employees.

And we had certified five extension employees to be ASI certified instructors.

And it has become, I'm gonna say it's kind of become the flagship partnership.

- [Reporter] And here's the reason why according to the consumer product safety commission each year 135,000 people are injured due to ATV accidents, and over 700 people are killed.

And approximately one third of those who die are under the age of 16.

Experts say many of these accidents could have been prevented, if rider followed proper safety advice.

- Rollovers, head injuries, kids goin over the front, you know, hitting the front brakes, they see a ditch, hit the front brakes.

And about the time it hits that ditch the kids go flying over.

First thing hits the ground is their head - [Reporter] The training is thorough and covers 11 key safety lessons.

- We learn ATV FIT how important it is to ride an ATV that fits the kids.

We learn about throttle breaking and weight shift to control the ATV in a safe manner.

We also learn how important it is to wear protective gear important to wear the helmets, the goggles, the gloves the long sleeves, the long pants and boots over the ankle.

So that's really what we stress here in our program.

- [Reporter] Serious safety, but it's also enjoyable.

- It's a fun program.

It's not your average safety day is all I'm gonna tell you.

- And then at the end, we go on a trail ride around here and we ride through the trees.

And every one of the lessons we utilize on the trail ride down through the trees, creek, uphill, downhill.

- Each young person leaves with a new helmet, thanks to a grant, but the most important takeaways are the lessons that will help keep them safe for a lifetime.

The ATV safety program just won a national award from Farm Bureau as one of the most innovative new programs in the entire organization.

And even though the headquarters are in Guthrie, organizers will take the program and the training across Oklahoma.

To learn more, just go to sunup.state.edu.

And that does it for us this week.

Remember, you can see us anytime on our website and also follow us on YouTube and social media.

I'm Lyndall Stout.

We'll see you next time at SUNUP.