- Good morning everyone.

I'm Lyndall Stout and we have a great show for you lined up today on Sunup Avian influenza is Back in Oklahoma.

We'll look at how it could impact poultry production this winter.

Then Dr.

Dave Lalman continues his popular series on how much it costs to raise a cow and find out what makes Bill Klier a distinguished alumnus in the Ferguson College of Agriculture.

Grab your cup of coffee because Sunup starts right now.

We are joined now by Dr.

Roslyn Biggs, our extension veterinarian and beef cattle specialist and, and Roslyn, in the first cases of avian influenza reported in Oklahoma this year.

Kind - Of get us up to speed.

So we're seeing things similar to what we saw last year.

We've had documented highly pathogenic avian influenza in wild waterflow in Tulsa County in particular in a swan and a Canada goose.

- So you and fellow veterinarians and the state veterinarian office really kind of start mobilizing right with that education piece.

Is that what's happening?

- Absolutely.

We wanna get the word out in particular to poultry producers and for certain our backyard poultry producers that enhanced biosecurity really needs to be elevated right now.

And taking a look at ways to separate our domestic poultry, so think backyard chickens for instance, and making sure we're separating them and have clear boundaries between those animals and wild wilded birds.

- So the separation, that's kind of the main thing as far as logistics, but what are some of those other best practices for biosecurity?

- Absolutely best, best practices for biosecurity really starts at keeping, keeping my flock at the house separate and distinct from travel and movement.

So I don't wanna go visit a neighbor with poultry and come back or this time of year if we're duck hunters, for instance, I don't want to go duck hunt at the at the pond and then come back and take care of my birds.

So we have physical separation from people, we also have physical separation from birds.

So if we're buying new birds or we have birds that go some to some other location and come back, we wanna make sure that we're isolating quarantining those birds, if you will, for a minimum of really 30 days before we introduce them to the flock.

And then we also want to have daily inspections of our existing birds looking for kind of classic clinical signs of avian influenza.

- And what are some of those signs?

- Think about that influenza E experience, you know, discharge from the eyes, discharge from the nose, coughing, sneezing int.

And even in severe cases, particularly with highly pathogenic avian influenza, we can really see sudden death, unfortunately.

- We talked about the animal side.

What do I need to keep in mind kind of on the human side?

- Well, avian influenza does have a component of it that can be zoonotics, so it can be transmitted to humans, although that risk is extremely, extremely low.

So first and foremost, we want consumers to feel comfortable that their eggs and other poultry products are safe to eat.

We of course, from a food safety aspect, we wanna make sure their cooked appropriately to appropriate temperatures.

And then from an animal handling piece of it, if we own birds ourselves, we wanna make sure again that we're looking for those signs of influenza and making sure that if we ourselves have influenza, that we're not interacting with our birds.

Meaning if we have human influenza that we're not interacting with our birds.

- If someone suspects they have a, a sick bird, important to reach out to your veterinarian, - Right?

It's key to reach out to your veterinarian.

And if a bird owner does not have a veterinarian, the state veterinarian's office with Oklahoma Department of Agriculture is always on call to receive those type of notifications too.

- We're just kinda scratching the surface today, but the extension OSU extension has a lot of resources, educational materials available.

- Absolutely.

Good fact sheets.

We have an online backyard poultry course that folks can take.

Definitely take a look at extension options.

- Okay, Dr.

Biggs, thanks a lot.

Thank you.

And for a link to those extension materials, go to sunup.OKstate.edu.

Talking livestock now and Dr.

Dave Lalman's popular series that continues on just how much it costs to raise a cow.

- We're joined now with Dr.

Dave Lalman and he is continuing his series on how much it costs to raise a cow.

And Dave, last time we talked we were just kind of talking about feed costs and how to hit that sweet spot.

But when it comes to that sweet spot for supplementation and feed costs, how do you know where that sweet spot is?

Yeah, - Well you have to do your homework and we talked about the resources available last time, you know, issue calculators, software program, fact sheets, nutrient requirements of beef cattle, which we can post those on on the Sunup website, but that would be, that would be the way to start.

But you know, I thought we might just work through an example - And you actually have some cowboy math for us right here to go through.

- Indeed do.

All right, let's dig into it.

Yeah, so you know what I'm gonna, what I'm gonna give you just a quick example of balancing a supplement or evaluating a diet for about a 1200 pound cow, we're gonna assume she's maybe a little bit on the thin side, so maybe a body candition score four to four and a half and we'd like her to be in a five.

Well if she's a spring calver and just weaned her calf, she's in about the middle of gestation approximately, and that is the best time of the production cycle to put weight on a cow.

Okay.

Assuming you have a proper supplement.

Last time we talked about this, Kurtis, I mentioned that our native range forage around Stillwater, Oklahoma is testing about 6% protein and 55% TDN.

So we're gonna use that as a base for this 1200 pound cow.

We want her to gain about a pound a - Day.

Yeah.

- Okay.

So her requirements to accomplish that weight gain, she needs about a pound and three quarters a day of protein and she needs about 12.3 pounds of TDN or energy.

Okay.

If she's eating about 20 pounds of that native range forage, 6% protein 55 TDN, she's gonna be consuming 1.2 pounds of protein from the forage and about, what is that?

11 pounds of TDN from the forage.

Okay.

So if we do the quick math on that, that leaves her a little over half a pound short on protein and a little a about a pound 0.3 short on energy.

So now we'll just go find a supplement to meet that supplemental need.

- So how much range cubes would you actually need to cover all that?

- Well, that's good questions.

I mean, range cube's a very popular supplementation source.

So if we assume that we're gonna go purchase a 25% protein range cube, two pounds a day, get you right at half a pound of protein, so that would just nearly perfectly fill that protein deficiency.

If we assume that that supplement is about 75% TDN, you know, that gets you about one and a half pounds of the TDN or energy and we needed 1.3 and so we're there.

Right.

And that, you know, that costs, my costs on that is about 39 cents a day, give or take.

So you know, we encourage people to go through the quick math like that themselves.

You know, if you need help with what the requirements are based on the stage of production or how much gain the cow needs to make, that's where you would contact your extension educator, your area livestock specialist, download the the calculator software evaluation program.

That's exactly the kind of math that it's designed to help you work through.

- And obviously, as you were mentioning throughout this series, that fee costs is one of the biggest control like aspects of control that producers have with their productions.

- Yeah, it is.

And you know, the reason to go through that math is to have confidence that you are finding the sweet spot, meaning we're gonna meet the animal's requirements but not overdo it and waste money on unnecessary feed.

- And it's always just good to know where you're at regardless in your production.

- Oh, well, I mean, I mean that's the key is we talked about when we started this series.

You know, the take home message was know your cost and then work to control those costs.

- Alrighty, thanks Dave.

Dr.

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

- Hello, Oklahoma.

Emma White here with your weekly Mesonet weather report.

This past Tuesday morning, a cold front came through much of Oklahoma, which caused an increase of wind speeds and wind gusts.

According to this map, there were gusts over 40 miles an hour in the winter, the effects of wind become most significant for humans and cattle.

Let's talk about that today.

This map shows the minimum windchill experienced Wednesday October 29th for both the Mesonet and the National Weather Service.

They're focused on human cold risk, so plot windchill only once the temperature drops below 50 degrees and there's wind above three miles an hour.

Once those conditions are met, these windchill map numbers mean that you feel a colder temperature than the actual temperature due to the wind.

That feeling of colder temperatures increases with increasing wind speeds.

This also means your cold risk in the winter then also increases as wind speeds get higher.

For cattle, their feel temperature calculation incorporates more information, so does consider temperatures above 50 degrees Fahrenheit.

About halfway through October 28th, you can see small dips in cattle comfort.

These dips of the feel temperature were due mostly to increased winds from the passing of the cold front and storms that day.

However, it was a brief and small drop, not anywhere close to cold danger.

This graph simply demonstrates that wind can cause the feeling of cooler temperatures.

This final graph shows average wind speed in Norman.

During the fall, the wind picks up and stays high through the spring.

The summer produces the lowest wind speeds, generally.

This graph means that with winter on the way we expect higher wind speeds, those higher winds mean that when the temperature gets cold in the winter, we are at risk for faster onset of hypothermia and frostbite than for that same winter temperature with lighter winds.

Wind is important.

Gary McManus is up next with your state climatology report.

- Thanks Emma, and good morning everyone.

Well, we finally got rain and some really good rains across the state.

Not everybody that needed rain got those good rains, but enough that we did have some good changes on the drought monitor.

So let's take a look at that newest map.

Well, the northern half of the state is much improved, especially that northeastern corner.

We do see still a little bit of moderate drought up there in the Payne County area, Pawnee County.

However, most of that area is on the improvements movement and not quite as much as the worsening movement.

Now as we get down into the Oklahoma City area into the south, we still see some of that moderate and also severe drought, those darker colors.

And we also have a new area down in Stevens and Jefferson County down there in south central Oklahoma.

So northern half, good job with the rain.

Southern half need more rain.

That's a simple answer.

Now, the rainfall we saw over the last week that we used to improve that drought monitor map, you can see it pretty clearly there in North central Oklahoma, up in the northeast Oklahoma, over in the east central Oklahoma.

Once again, lots of rainfall totals from four to five to as much as six, even seven inches in some cases.

So lots of good rainfall in that area.

But if you look down there in Southwestern and south central Oklahoma and into West Central Oklahoma, we see those areas with less than an inch of rainfall.

So they really missed out on the good rains, but hopefully they'll get theirs the next time.

One of the best things that rainfall did was it improved the soil moisture.

You can see from this seven day change in the 10 inch soil moisture mounts in Oklahoma, those green areas, lots of the good changes, lots of moistening, at least down to that 10 inch level.

But you can also see some of those areas where it worsened, especially in West central Oklahoma or just areas where it didn't improve at all.

So we'll certainly take that good rainfall we had over the last week, but we definitely need more, especially across the southern half of the state.

That's it for this time.

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

- Hello and welcome to the Market Monitor.

I am, I'm Oklahoma State University agricultural economist, John Michael Riley.

And as of taping some hot news off the presses is that we finally got some, some shipments of soybeans to China.

As of right now, the government is still shut down, so we're not getting information from customs or from United States Department of Agriculture, but Reuters is reporting that we've got 180,000 metric tons that have, are set to be delivered and sometime in December or January of soybeans from the US to China.

So that's really important news.

Prior to that, there had been no shipments of soybeans to China, which is, which is the largest trading partner with regard to soybeans that the US has had historically, again, China still remains fairly well connected with Brazil.

Most of the beans since over the past five to six years that China has bought has come from Brazil.

But U US is still a a, a pretty important trading partner with with China.

Since Friday, soybeans are up 50 cents and since the October 1st, soybeans have rallied quite a bit.

So again, a lot of good news that's come through in regard to soybeans kind of carrying on the coattails of soybeans is corn and wheat.

We've seen corn prices rally to about 10 cents.

Wheat prices have rallied about 20 cents since this past Friday.

So a lot of, a lot of optimism in the marketplace right now as a result of, of some potential trade deals throughout most of the Asian countries.

Some other news to be aware of is that there, that our, our farm service agency's offices opened up on October 23rd to start restart.

Some of the payments that are are coming through P-L-C-A-R-C, some of our farm program payments that had been going out the door.

So those common October payments should be resuming here, if not already, they should be resuming rather quickly.

And then also on the, on the farm program standpoint, there is some optimism that there will be some farm aid coming once the government reopens.

There's a couple of different avenues that, that, where that could come from, whether it be through the commodity Credit Corp or through tariff revenue, but there is anticipation that that more farm aid is on its way.

And then lastly, kind of mentioned soybeans, corn and wheat don't wanna leave cotton off, but cotton has also seen a rally since about the middle of the mo since about the middle of October.

A little bit of of coattail dragging there from other, other summer crops, a little bit of coattail dragging in terms of potential trade.

Keep in mind, China also is a, is a big importer of US cotton.

So all of those new, all of that news has has provided some, some optimism in the cotton market and we've seen about a 3 cent rally over the past few days in with prices hovering around 66 cents per pound on the futures market.

So those are some finally get to bring you some optimism.

Well, that'll do it for this week's market monitor and look forward to seeing you in a few weeks.

I'm John Michael Riley, OSU Agricultural economist.

- A pause now to tell our Sunup viewers just how important you are to us and to the people who care about you.

Stress on the farm and ranch is always present and some days you feel its impact much more than other days.

Stress, emotional wellbeing, resilience, finances, and farm transition planning are among the topics covered through OSU extensions Farm Stress Resources collection.

We have a link for you at the sunup website, sunup dot okay state.edu.

And you can also scan this QR code or reach out to your local county extension office with questions.

And remember, if you or someone you know is in crisis, dial 9, 8 8, anytime to talk immediately with a trained professional who can help.

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

Our topic this week is kind of a culmination of several things that we know that only about 25 to 30% of Oklahoma cow calf operations calve in the fall.

We know that typically if we've got some wheat pasture or cool season grass that can be used to nutritionally supplement the cow herd.

And it's great for creep grazing calves and getting optimum gains on them at a time through the winter when we wouldn't have a lot of warm season grass growing or available.

So what are we facing this year?

Fall of 2025.

Dismal prospects for cool season pasture.

We're fortunate today as we tape, we are getting rain.

We've been getting rain for a few hours and it looks like we'll continue to get rain for the next two or three days.

The reality is we're pretty short of optimum growing days from this point forward until December.

If we don't have a lot of cool season pasture on hand right now, it's probably gonna be late winter and spring before we really begin to see that and capitalize on this moisture.

So we address the prospect of creep feeding in a cow calf operation.

Historically, creep feeding in a commercial cow calf operation is not a profitable practice.

There's ample research that's been done shows us that creep feedings are gonna increase waning weights by close to 60 pounds on average.

The conversion rate of feed to gain is anywhere from three pounds of feed to 20 pounds of feed.

So it's wild and all over the board.

Typically what we see and in studies here at OSU, the better the nutritional availability, whether it is the maternal influence and milk coming from the cow or g grable forage from those growing calves, the worst feed conversion we actually see if we're feeding creep.

Now, in contrast to that, the poorer the nutritional situation is for the calves.

The less milk from the cow if they're trying to graze dormant native range.

If pastures are overgrazed, and particularly when we look at fall calving cow herds and calves born in the fall, we see more efficiency in the conversion of creep feed into gain for calves.

And so while we talk about the historic nature of creep feeding, not being profitable, in times when feed is inexpensive and calf prices are really valuable, are exceptions to that rule feed is relatively inexpensive right now.

A 14 to 16% crude protein creep ration can probably be put together or purchased for somewhere between maybe under $400 a ton up to four 50, maybe a little bit more.

The value of a pound of wean calf up to 600 pounds right now is in excess of $4 a pound, even at a 20 to one conversion ratio, this pencil's out with profit margin.

And so if you find yourself in a situation, your wheat pasture's not where it needs to be, you're a little short on nutrition for some fall borne calves that are getting to be about two, three months of age right now, potentially putting together a good quality nutrient dense creep feed, something that's gonna help those calves along maybe until we get to that cool season grass later in the spring, could easily be cost effective.

As always, I encourage producers to take a look at this from an economic standpoint, you're running a business, think of the inputs that's gonna require relative to the value that those inputs create, but right now, if ever creep feeding in a commercial cow calf operation, maybe something to take a look at.

Thanks for joining us on Cow-Calf - Corner.

Finally, today we learn what makes Bill Climer a distinguished alumnus in the OSU Ferguson College of Agriculture video production manager Craig Woods.

Put together our story with a little help from our friend Ron Hayes at the radio Oklahoma Network.

- Just like riding a bull, Bill, Clymer's life is being wild, unpredictable, and unforgettable.

He's been an ag teacher, a groundbreaking researcher, a rancher, a rodeo champion, and even a movie star, or as Bill likes to say, woo-hoo, what arrived - I, I was born and grew up in a little town of OK, Oklahoma, going clear by before I even got into school, or I guess I was about 91st grader or something, but my dad was killed in an industrial accident trying to save another man's life, so made a pretty good platform that encouraged me to help other people.

- Bill was motivated by his agricultural education instructor to pursue college and following his footsteps.

- When I got to Oklahoma State, I kind of forgot why I was there for that first semester and I got a call from my advisor and said, Mr.

Clymer, I'll never forget this discussion.

Mr.

Clymer, you have a full four year free ride scholarship to college through the Robert S Curve Scholarship program, you must also maintain a 3.0 grade point average.

And he shook his finger in the face and said, I don't think a 1.6 is gonna quite cut it.

- Bill buckled down and graduated in 1965 with a degree in agricultural education, and he found a job at Plainview High School in Texas as a Bo ag instructor.

- After just a year ago, I had opportunity to come back to Oklahoma State with work on PhD.

And actually my background was primarily livestock, but this was through the enology department, but they needed somebody that understood the tick problem in eastern Oklahoma, which is where I grew up.

- After receiving his doctorate in 1969, Dr.

Kleer went to work for Texas A and M extension service, eventually moving to Amarillo and starting his own company.

His research into Ivermectin helped revolutionize parasite control in cattle, but his first wife, Doris, was dealing with a serious medical condition.

To help with insurance and medical costs.

Dr.

Clymer decided to join Fort Dodge Animal Health as their international parasitologist.

He also worked as an adjunct professor at West Texas University and served as an advisor for a young student named Justin Talley.

- And it's not only the expertise that he had in the knowledge that I gained from him, but it's also the approach he had.

The approach is phenomenal.

The approach is all about thinking about how the science integrates with the production.

And if you think about that, that's really what made him a great entrepreneur.

- Bill had also been involved in rodeo since his youth, including his time with the OSU Rodeo Club, and he was a rodeo announcer with his voice featured prominently in the 1991 movie.

My heroes have always been cowboys.

Bill is still involved in rodeo.

Among other things, he raises award-winning bulls on his Amarillo Ranch.

- You know, it's almost like raising the Marshall Cattle, except they're a lot harder to handle and they need a full-time welder almost.

It pins welded back to the other because they get to fight and then raising how strong they are.

- Bill has also established a scholarship for students on the rodeo team.

- Bill's had a incredibly interesting and diverse career in a variety of different areas, but I think one of the through lines to all the different jobs he's had is that focus on other people and that focus on service, that desire to help people and help improve their lot in life despite the many varied careers he's had.

I think that's one of the hallmarks of Bill Clymer.

- For all his success.

Bill is humbled to receive this distinguished Alumni award.

- First of all, it was an extreme shock and I literally balled because I didn't think I was qualified, but I do hopefully have represented Oklahoma State, you know, to as much as I can.

And of course, I always told everybody I took A and M's money, but I never went school with her - Celebrating Dr.

Bill Clymer, 2025 Ferguson College of Agriculture Distinguish Alumnus.

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

A reminder that you can see Sunup anytime on our website.

Follow us on social media and stream our videos anytime at youtube.com/sunup tv.

We leave you today with some really great pictures, once again captured by our chief photographer, Mitchell Alcala at Sanborn Lake in Stillwater.

Hands-on learning in the field for students in the Ferguson College of Agriculture working with Songbirds, I'm Lyndall Stout.

We'll see you next time at Sunup.