- Hello everyone and welcome to Sunup.

I'm Lyndall Stout.

Turkey season is right around the corner in Oklahoma and hunters and landowners are getting geared up.

To talk more about it, We're joined by our new OSU extension State Wildlife Specialist, Dr. Mark Turner.

- Really excited to be here and really excited to be the new State Wildlife Extension specialist here.

So my programming is really gonna focus on applied habitat management issues, especially centered on several game species such as whitetailed deer, wild turkeys, and northern bob white com, more commonly known as quail.

So really, really excited to be here and hopefully be producing both some research and extension products that landowners and, and others in Oklahoma can, can use and get some good information out of.

- Well, let's kind of dive into our, our discussion today.

Turkey season is upon us here in Oklahoma, and I'm sure folks are, are getting geared up already.

- Absolutely.

There's a, there's a lot of folks in Oklahoma that are really excited about turkeys, a lot of landowners interested in managing for turkeys on their property.

Certainly there's been some concern recently about turkey populations.

There's been a little bit of, you know, reduction in bag limits in the state and, and some some concern from landowners about the numbers of birds that they're seeing.

But the good news is there's still lots of turkeys in Oklahoma, lots of opportunities for hunting, and I'm personally really excited to get out this spring as well - And, and kinda get to know the state too while you're at it.

Absolutely.

So when, when does turkey season start and how long does it run?

- So turkey season in Oklahoma runs from, from, from mid, mid-April through mid, that's about a month long season here.

- Let's talk about the turkey population and, and how it's looking this year and what some of the, the challenges and then opportunities that are shaping up.

- Right.

So there has been some concern about the turkey population recently.

It seems like maybe some things are stabilizing in, in certain parts of the state, which are good.

There have been some declines in other areas, but overall again, there's should still be plenty of opportunity.

One of the main issues that we're seeing, at least with some of the research that that's been con been working on at OSU has been just, just relatively low nest success, relatively low brood survival, you know, so we're really not bringing birds into the population as well as we might hope.

And then also a lot of the hens while they're nesting are, are actually getting killed on the nest.

And that's certainly a population issue if those, if those hens are not surviving and able to, to continue being productive because the harvest effort really focuses on males, those females are just providing, you know, future, future harvest opportunities and, you know, future birds for the population.

- Do you know some of the reasons why we're seeing some of the problems that you mentioned?

- There's, there's several different hypotheses out there and it's, it's probably not one single issue, but I think that the thing that most folks would agree on that have been working on this is that habitat quality is certainly a real problem and something that a lot of landowners and managers could be addressing specifically during the nesting season.

You know, having good cover out there for the hens.

And then, you know, really what I think is probably the most limiting factor is once those eggs hatch the, you know, the young turkeys, the poults have to be able to forage effectively and have to have covered and not be killed by predators.

So there's a lot of problems there.

And so promoting, you know, good annual plant communities that are dominated by what a lot of folks would probably call weeds is actually really gonna be beneficial for, for, for those broods whenever they're, they're young and, and trying to, trying to grow because they have to spend that first, first about two weeks of their life on the ground and they're certainly pretty vulnerable then.

- So are there some things that landowners can do this spring and to kind of get those wildlife areas on, on their land ready?

- Right.

- These, these young ones that are about to hatch?

- Yep, there, there's, there certainly are.

One of the main things would be, you know, avoiding mowing during that time of year.

Of course that's, that's a really easy low hanging fruit, but for landowners that wanna get a little bit more engaged than that, killing off non-native grasses in, in areas that they're trying to manage for turkeys is, is gonna be really beneficial.

Also using things like prescribed fire or even discing.

But, but certainly, you know, this time of year they could certainly go ahead work on killing out those non-native grasses, apply some fire to those areas and that's gonna have potentially, you know, benefit those, those broods this spring.

- Okay, great.

Well, lots of stuff to talk about.

We know you'll be building your program now over the next several months and, and years for that matter.

There is a fact sheet that available now on, on turkeys right, for folks to use through OSU extension, - Correct?

Correct.

There's a, there's an excellent fact sheet on Rio Grande Turkey specifically, so that's more focused on the western portion of Oklahoma and management there, but certainly gonna be having some more information coming out and, and looking forward to sharing that with folks.

- All right, Mark, well really nice to meet you and best of luck as you get everything started with your program and we hope to have you on Sunup quite frequently.

- Absolutely.

Look forward to it and thanks for having me.

- Okay, sure.

And for a link to the fact sheet that Mark mentioned, just go to sunup.OKstate.edu.

- Well Sunup viewers, if you've been watching the show for a few years, you might remember our reproductive specialist, Dr. Glenn Selk and his recommendations when it came to body condition scores when it comes to calving.

So Dave, why don't you talk a little bit about Glenn's recommendations and kind of overall the importance of that.

- Well, there's a lot of research done in that area and it's very clear that, you know, if a cow calves, well, let's put it this way, when the condition a cow calves in, in other words, thin, moderate, or really fleshy has a really big influence on the postpartum interval and the amount of time it takes for her to start cycling again and then get, you know, get pregnant, that was the, that was the main story.

And you know, you don't want to have a bunch of cows calving or going into calving season and thin condition.

- So talk a little bit about the body condition scores and you know, Glen used to always recommend, I believe it was five to six, right?

That was his recommendations.

- Yes, five.

We, we recommend a minimum of a five on a cow and a body condition score six on heifer, which would be a little bit, you know, above a, a moderate condition score.

So, and that's because the first calf heifers are gonna have a longer postpartum interval.

If they calf as a 2-year-old, then a mature cow would've.

- And of course that always has an impact on the bottom line for a producer, right?

- Oh, sure.

You know, the longer the postpartum interval, the longer it takes those cows to get bred, the later they'll have the next season, probably the lighter the weaning weight.

- You know, just before we hopped on camera, you were telling me about a data set that's actually really unique in regards to body condition scores.

Talk a little bit about that.

- Yeah, so I have a, a friend, a long time friend, we had been talking quite a bit about cow efficiency on the phone for quite a few years.

His name is Dr. Matt Cherney is recently retired, but Dr. Cherney worked for a large ranch in northwest Wyoming.

In fact, this ranch had about 14,000 cows, so it was a huge operation and he had the opportunity to, to look at this relationship of body condition score to reproduction on that big set of cows.

And he just has an incredible data set on that topic.

And what he found, just like, you know, Dr.

Silk had been telling us about for years, what he found was that if a, if the cows that that, that were in a body condition score three or less really thin, had had a, a pregnancy rate in the low seventies.

Okay.

Cows that averaged about a body condition score four had a pregnancy rate year in and year out of around 80 low eighties.

Okay.

Cows that calved in body can score 5 92, 93% pregnancy rate and then cows that caved in a six or greater about 90, 94, 95%.

So a little bit better, but not much.

You get a really big bump from thin to moderately thin from a three or less to a four, you get another big bump from a four to a moderate condition score to a five, right about another 10 percentage units.

And then from there on it doesn't really improve that much a little bit, but it doesn't improve that much.

So tremendous impact on their body composition at calving on, on their, you know, on their pregnancy rate, - You know, and that you said that took place in Wyoming, you know, thinking here in Oklahoma and for like a lot of productions when they have, you know, cows that might be, you know, in that kind of three to four area, is that something that maybe they should just maybe think about calling and getting out of their herd?

- You know, that's, that's a good way to look at it, I think rather than maybe separating them and managing them so they don't, so they don't have reproductive failure, let them fail and, and by doing so over time, you know, you're gradually selecting for fertility and obviously there's a pretty strong connection or correlation between body condition and pregnancy rate.

So yeah, if you, you know, if you, first thing you should probably do if you need to cull or, or you should cull the opens, let's start with that.

And then if you have the opportunity maybe in a drought year where you need to back off on your stocking area a little bit, then maybe cull those thin cows even if they are pregnant, because they're, they're the ones that are most susceptible in telling you that maybe they're not a great match.

- So Dave, as always have a ton of great information and if, if producers really want some help, they, OSU has tons of resources available to assist them through this.

- We do, you know, if they're not familiar with the body condition scoring system, we have a really nice fact sheet that that walks through that shows pictures of examples of each body condition score and so - On.

All right, thanks Dave.

Dr. Dave Lalman, OSU extension beef cattle specialist here at Oklahoma State University.

And if you'd like a link to that fact sheet and the data set that Dave mentioned, just go to sunup.OKstate.edu.

- Cattlemen and women, A great opportunity is coming your way.

The Kingfisher County fairgrounds is hosting an upcoming cow calf bootcamp from April 8th to April 10th.

This three day event is designed for all stages and levels of experience.

You'll learn more about nutrition, health, forage management and economics, while also gaining hands-on experience working with cattle and problem solving with other producers.

You'll also have the opportunity to visit local operations and ask questions to extension educators and specialists.

Registration is $150 and includes five meals and an updated OSU beef cattle manual.

The event is limited to 50 people.

So hurry and register now.

For more information, go to sunup.OKstate.edu.

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

Well, we went straight from winter right into spring, am I right?

So a couple of weeks ago we were talking about wind chills down to minus 25 and below we had snow and ice covering the state.

Now we've had tornadoes, unfortunately, however, it is Oklahoma and we want rain.

That's generally what it comes with in the springtime.

So let's take a look at those rainfall totals this week and see where we are.

I mean it's not bad for an early March rainfall event, we did get, you know, a good one to two inches across a good portion of the state.

Now of course some areas got a lot less and that's the nature of convective precipitation in Oklahoma during the spring with those thunderstorms.

Some folks get a lot, some folks get a little bit less, but this does help slow the drought down at least a little bit.

I'm not gonna show the drought monitor map this week, we are gonna wait and see how it fleshes out, but at least we did get some pretty good rainfall in some areas we even set the consecutive days with less than a a 10th of an inch of rainfall map.

So everybody's in the green except for just a few select locations.

Unfortunately those areas do need more rainfall, but this is a much better looking map than what we've seen over the last few months and what comes with those big storms after they move on out.

And the, on the backside of those storms, we get those big time winds.

These are non thunderstorm wind gusts after the storm moved over to the east and we see 50 to 60 to as much as 70 miles per hour in parts of the state.

So that doesn't help matters when you're dry and a lot of that rain that fell and that'll go right up into the atmosphere when we get winds of this strength.

Hey, let's talk about where we were before this storm system came through and provided all the nasty stuff but also the rainfall.

Let's take a look at the winter rainfall.

This is where we were before, as I said.

So we had some pretty good rains, 15 to close to 20 inches down in far southeastern Oklahoma, but it did decline rapidly to the north and west.

And we got, when we got to central Oklahoma, it was about a two inches and then you get into Western Oklahoma and you were less than an inch and in some cases less than a quarter inch.

So pretty dry winter for Oklahoma this time around.

That shows up on the deficit map for the winter, you know, good two to three inch deficits across much of the state from southwestern up through northeastern Oklahoma surrounding that.

And then in the panhandle we had deficits generally an inch to two inches and then down in southeast Oklahoma are only surpluses for the winter of about one to two inches and then up to as much as six inches in far southeast Oklahoma.

Temperature's not too bad here we see, you know, basically climatology low thirties in the panhandle to mid forties down across the Red River region.

So not too bad.

If you look at the departure from normal for the winter temperatures, you know, generally about an end, about a degree to two degrees below normal.

Some cases pretty close to normal but not bad for a winter in Oklahoma, certainly after a really cold February and also our cold January, that warm December tended to to even things out a bit.

Okay, let's take a look at the climate prediction center's outlooks for March.

We see increased odds of above normal temperatures across the entire state, but especially across south, the south, about one third of Oklahoma, and then increased odds of below normal precipitation across the southwestern half or so of the state.

Now for the drought outlook through March, they do see drought persisting down across southwestern and south central Oklahoma developing as you go over into southeast Oklahoma a little bit more and also persisting across north central Oklahoma and those little splotches in east central and west central Oklahoma as well.

So not too bad considering the outlook that we saw for March on the temperature and precipitation.

So a pretty good rainfall from a a storm system right out of the bat as we entered climatological spring, every little bit helps.

We certainly had a dry winter so we're just counteracting some of that.

That's it for this time.

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

- We're here now with our OSU extension livestock marketing specialist, Dr. Darrel Peel.

So Darrel, we're into March now in January.

The markets were really high and then it kind of took a weird turn in the middle of February last time we talked and now we're kind of back to where we were at again, what's happening in the markets.

- Yeah, I think this is kind of a sign of the times.

We did set new record prices in January, but we've had so much, you know, political news, uncertainty in the markets, a lot of macroeconomics, external factors to the cattle industry.

And so the market made a correction in in February and that's, you know, it's not too surprising after a big run up.

Futures markets in particular often make a correction.

They're looking for any sort of news to react to, but the fundamentals are what they are and they haven't changed, so, so the market has bounced back here by the end of February going into March now we're back almost to those January levels.

- Yeah.

So should we expect more of this volatility going forward?

- Yeah, unfortunately I think that's gonna be the name of the game.

We've still got an awful lot of of political rhetoric going on, a lot of uncertainty about exactly what policies are gonna be.

So, you know, producers have to be aware of, of those kind of short term corrections.

Again, our overall expectations are for higher prices on average, but you know, sell on average you sell at specific points in time, so you need to be prepared for this kind of volatility and protect against those kind of market shocks that might impact you.

- Yeah, and one of the things that has been impacting the markets is the new world screw worm, right?

- Yeah.

You know, that's also added some uncertainty to the markets.

We closed the border late November last year, it opened up in early February and there's been some concern that the backlog of cattle might cause some problems, but it really isn't.

In fact, you know, the, even though the border's open, there's, you know, new protocols in place, it's, it's limiting the number of cattle coming in.

It's a very, very slow pace.

So I don't, I don't foresee any issues relative to markets in terms of that thing building over time before we get back to sort of normal trade levels.

- Yeah.

And do you know how that might change in the future?

- Well I think we'll slowly make progress Now we've got tariff issues on top of that, so there'll be more uncertainty about that, but I think it's gonna be a slow process.

I don't look for big numbers anytime soon.

- Okay.

Yeah.

And then we've been getting some good rain lately.

How might that affect the markets?

- You know, in the short run, obviously we've got cattle still out on wheat, especially graze out cattle will benefit from this.

You know, I think producers will, will see this rain as probably setting us up for at least a good start to the spring.

You know, in some areas we're gonna start to see some warmup, hopefully sometime in the next few weeks here we've still got underlying, you know, concerns about La Nina conditions and, and drought going forward.

But this will certainly help in the short run to kind of get us off to a good start.

We'll see where we go from here.

- Yeah.

And so with all of this change that's been going on with these past few months and going into the future, what should producers move forward with?

- Well, I think we're proceeding with caution and that's probably a good thing to do, but individually, you know, we've got record level prices in the market.

Producers want to try to get positioned to take advantage of that.

So, you know, be careful but take advantage of it.

- Yeah.

Alright, well thanks Darryl.

We'll talk to you in a couple of weeks.

You - Bet.

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

It's that time of year as we move into the month of March where spring breeding season's just around the corner and bull sale season is in full swing in the state of Oklahoma.

We got a lot of outstanding purebred seed stock operations and a lot of bulls on the market at various sales.

As we move through this part of the year, as each one of those bulls, as we take inventory of what we need this spring at the time, we're gonna turn out each one of those bulls comes with a cost to benefits ratio or a value proposition or however you wanna look at the profit potential.

He either adds or takes away from the calf crop he's gonna sire.

There's several assumptions and things we want to keep in mind as we evaluate that return on investment from a bull purchase or what he has to offer to our operation.

And among those things we wanna invest in bulls that have passed a breeding soundness exam that sell with a registration paper and that registration paper is gonna document their age, their pedigree, and it's gonna tell us what their genetic potential is for a number of traits.

We also wanna keep in mind that that bull needs to compliment our cow herd and he needs to add value at the marketing endpoint for the calves that we're gonna assume he sis for us over the lifetime of a bull, depending on how many cows we intend to use them on.

We've all gotta take into account about how many calves he's gonna sire relative to that intended marketing endpoint.

And we can effectively work through and figure relative to cost.

What does a bull have the potential to add?

An example that you could find where we've worked through something like this is in our most recent cow cow-calf corner newsletter on March the third.

But take for example, you were looking to identify bulls to use as terminal sires selling all the calves as yearlings.

You could put an economic value on the yearling weight that they could potentially sire for you relative to a yearling weight EPD versus the cost or the investment initial purchase price of that bull, and arrive at a budget for the bulls you're gonna purchase.

Evaluate this for your own operation.

Keep in mind that you need to have a budget when you're buying bulls, but your budget needs to be realistic and keep in mind that nothing can pay for themselves quicker than the right investment in the proper genetics for a cow calf operation relative to your cow herd and the intended marketing endpoint for those calves.

Thanks for joining us on Cow Calf Corner.

- Finally today, bringing people together to understand the importance and benefits of prescribed fire.

Sunups Elizabeth Hokit picks it up from here.

Roaring - Fire UTVs racing across a field and educators imparting wisdom are just a few of the sounds heard on this brisk cloudy day.

- We're having a prescribed fire technology field day, which is trying to showcase equipment ideas and things to help make prescribed burning safer, make it easier.

We've got some vendors that make spray units, pumps different things from around the area as well as across the United States.

Some ignition devices, thanks for making fire breaks, a lot of different kind of aspects to prescribe burning.

- Katie is the president of the Cimarron Range Preservation Association, but today she's also a participant.

- Yeah, it, it's always good to, to learn about new equipment and new technologies that are available and to actually get the hands on to see, touch, feel the whole, you know, if you don't see it, I, I'm a tactile person, so being able to look at it, look at it, and then go see what it's actually done, Johnny on the spot right there in front of you is an excellent opportunity.

- Prescribed burning is an important management practice that we need to be doing.

I mean, it's, it's a natural occurrence.

It occur, occurred historically.

Native Americans burnt historically throughout all of Oklahoma, throughout all the Great Plains very frequently.

And so all of our plant community and most our wildlife species are adapted to fire.

And so again, we've taken fire out of that system.

And so what happens when we take fire outta that system?

Your grasslands become woodlands.

- Those who work in conservation like Trampis Trip, know the impact fire can really have on the land.

- When fire was taken away from this system, that's when we start getting this eastern red cedar invasion.

We start getting the brush coming up, the, the desired species not being here anymore.

And with that we're also having issues with safety.

Look at California right now, for example, they're burning up because the brush has infested areas so much around the communities that there is no area to fight the fires.

- Fire can benefit livestock production and fire benefits the plant community, fire benefits, wildlife using fire can have an impact on water quality and quantity by again, reducing a lot of that woody plants and stuff that intercept a lot of that rainfall.

- If prescribed burning has so many benefits, why don't more people do it?

- People are scared of the unknown.

I mean, that's human nature.

We we're kind of resistant to what we know.

And then also there's been things throughout your life that you've been taught.

Smokey the bear taught you that fire's bad.

And so people believe that.

And, and it shouldn't be - Events like this help providing access to the science, the latest research and valuable information.

- It's important.

Get these people here that's really never been involved in, it's all they can see.

There's plenty of people out here that have used it and it works and you can, it can be done safely.

So you can get those people, give 'em some confidence that yes, it can be done.

They can talk to all the guys out here that has that have done it and give themselves some confidence to go out and do it.

- Newfound knowledge can be a big motivator - When you start talking dollars to people.

It makes a difference if they can get rid of the cass on their plate and run an additional 20 head of mama cows, that's more money they can bring in every year by just getting rid of cedar trees.

So that speaks volumes to people.

- Getting people to take that step forward and use fire.

A lot of times it's, it's a learning curve and help 'em to overcome that.

- Yeah, getting involved in a local prescribed burn association also helps.

- So what a prescribed burn association is, is where a group of people in a community or an area get together.

They pull their, their labor, they pull their equipment, they help each other burn it.

It's just like a, a branding or, you know, an old fashioned barn raising.

Wherever the community comes together, the neighbors come together, help each other out.

They're so, but they're helping each other to burn.

- So you have people you can rely on, all people with the same goal of improving the land can get together and you can achieve so much more.

So it's important the more you can get into a, in that group, the more you can get done.

- So the bigger the burns we can do, the more efficient they are.

You know, you can get more done.

If you're gonna go out and set a fire, you might as well be burning it all instead of just patches.

And so if you can get several ranchers to come together and put their ranches into one burn plan, you can get a lot more done with your bang for the buck.

- And when a community comes together for a common goal, that goal is often accomplished, a sense of unity that fosters growth, learning, and ultimately a more productive ecosystem.

For Sunup at Oklahoma State University, I'm Elizabeth Hokit.

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

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

I'm Lyndall Stout.

Have a great week everyone.

And remember, Oklahoma agriculture starts at Sunup.