- Good morning everyone.

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

First we're talking about the economic impact of OSU Wheat variety research and development in the state of Oklahoma.

Then we'll switch gears to cattle and look at how to manage stocker calves for the long haul.

And as hunting season is getting underway, we learn about deer antlers from our wildlife expert.

All that and much more over the next half hour and all new Sunup starts right now.

We begin this morning talking about the impact of OS U'S Wheat Improvement team financially on the state of Oklahoma with Dr.

Eric Deve, who is an OSU extension AG economist.

And Eric, you and the team ha have studied this for a while now, kind of kind of talk about some of the reasons why you looked into this.

- Well, it actually started out of a, another project that our colleague Dayton Lambert and I had, and we approached Brett Carver on it.

And while we were talking about that project, the question came up, has anybody ever analyzed the impact of the Oklahoma Wheat Improvement Team on Oklahoma agriculture, and particularly the wheat producers here in this state?

And the answer was no.

And we hummed and hawed and decided, well, maybe we shouldn't do that.

And a day later, Dayton and I said, we can do this.

And so starting in December, we just started rolling with this project.

- Lots of research of course, on the yield and, and protein value and a lot of other aspects, right.

Of the Right, right.

The agronomy part of things.

- Right.

- But this economic part, how did you even begin to set up a study like that and, and what were you hoping to find?

- So, well, obviously we wanted to measure first how are yields affected in the state by OSU wheat variety adoption, and how is the variability of yield affected?

And then how do we translate that into dollars?

And so that was our primary concern.

Fortunately, USDA Ag Marketing Service does surveys out there in the state to, to ask producers, what are you growing?

What varieties are they growing?

And so we had good data that spans 17 years.

And so we were able to use statistical techniques called regression modeling where we went in and we were able to ferret out the impact of these OSU varieties.

- I know there's a lot to this study, but what is the, the kind of the big takeaway for Sunup viewers at this stage?

- So what we found is that for every additional 1% of Oklahoma acres planted to OSU wheat varieties, we saw a 0.78 bushel increase in wheat yields on average across the, the study years and across the state.

And so, although that seems like a modest increase, it's non-trivial, it was statistically significant.

And then the other piece that really shocked us was how variants decreased.

And so what we're talking about is the range of values which wheat yield bounces between year to year.

And so 1% increase in the use of OSU wheat varieties resulted in a five bushel decrease in the variance of those wheat yields.

That's a substantial decrease in the risk that producers face.

So then we put dollars to it.

We wanted to analyze what, what does that mean in terms of added revenue to Oklahoma producers?

And so what it came down to was about $4.6 million per year that were added to the state's economy in terms of wheat revenue.

And over the study period, that was about $78 million in total that the wheat improvement team can account for during that seven, that 17 year period.

And when we analyze then how much the wheat improvement team spends to get that impact, you end up somewhere around $525,000 a year to do that.

And so you're looking at about an eight to one return on investment for the money that's put into the program versus the revenue that's generated by Oklahoma Wheat producers using those OSU varieties.

- And you and the team are gonna have more information published soon on the extension website and also academic publications, - Correct?

Yes.

So Dayton Lambert, my colleague in Aggie Con, Brent Carver and I, we have a fact sheet which is being revised and should be, should be completed and published soon.

And of course we have academic publications going to professional journals.

- Well, great information.

Fascinating study.

Best of luck to you, Dr.

Lambert and Dr.

Carver as you continue.

- Thank you.

- Thanks a lot Eric.

Talking cattle now and cheap gains, which is a term used when you put calves on stocker operations.

And when you do that, many factors can impact your success to learn more, here's Sunup's Kurtis Hair with Dr.

Paul Beck.

- Well, the weather's finally getting cool, and that means that those spring born calves are about to hit the stocker operations this winter.

And Paul, you recently had a cow calf newsletter topic where, you know, we often kind of think about calves on like stalker operations as just cheap game, but there's a lot more to it, right?

- Yeah, I've, I've, I've had a series of articles going through the cow calf corner newsletter talking about how management before finishing, whether it's during the cow calf phase or during the stocker phase, influences the performance and carcass quality of calves as they go through finishing and, and subsequently go to our consumer as as beef.

So there's a lot of different places where the decisions that a producer makes has some long-term impacts.

And this latest article is talking about the influence of the, the stocker industry.

And it's more than just cheap gain.

You know, the stocker operator is trying to make money on, on margins between the buy and the sale, but he's also adding value to the entire beef industry in several different ways.

You know, we're taking a lot of calves that are quite variable in, in genetics and they're adding immune resiliency and robustness to those calves going from a unweaned calf to a larger yearling.

- So why is it often thought of as cheap gain and why is it not actually?

- Whenever we are just trying to minimize the dollars we spend for these calves out on grass, we may not get the cheapest cost of gain.

You know, just the forage base or pastures may be deficient in nutrients, whether it's a mineral or energy or protein.

We need, might need to spend some money on some supplements to increase their gain to get better performance.

We can also use growth promoting technologies.

Ionophores, we can get about 10% increase in gain no matter what the, the base gain would be for those animals.

Implants are quite the same.

You know, we can get 10 to 20% improvement in performance for a very low investment no matter what the, the, the base rate of gain those cattle are going in.

So even if those cattle are, are gaining quite low rate of gain, we can get that 10 to 20% improvement in performance with either implants and ionophores.

If they're gaining quite a lot like on wheat pasture cattle, we will still get that 10 to 20% increase in gain for both of those technologies.

And the great thing about those technologies is they're different modes of action.

So that is additive.

So we can get 15 to 25% increase in performance with, with those technologies used together.

You know, one of the thoughts is if we add a supplement or we add these growth promoting technologies, we will decrease the performance during finishing.

And that is not always true.

If we are looking at just providing a cheaper energy type supplement, we may increase performance as a stocker calf, but we're increasing the flesh of those calves and it's probably not as efficient in increasing gain on pasture, even though it is cheap.

If we add a, a, a protein or a BA bypass protein supplement based on distillers grains for instance, or, or some of those commodities, we mo will get a, a nice increase in gain from both the protein and the energy, but the influence on feedlot gain will, will not be as great.

So we won't see that decrease in performance when they hit the finishing stage.

- So there's just a lot.

And I guess the takeaways to all of this is that pretty much everything matters.

- Yeah.

And the decisions we make early in the process can have a huge influence later on.

One of the biggest influencers where we can spend money and decrease our cost of, of performance is in health.

Vaccines, preconditioning, those all influence and have a much longer term influence on our final product and the profitability throughout the, the, the growing phase.

You know, if we're just trying to cheapen everything up, we may have lower total cost spent, but our cost of gain will be higher because you know, those cattle aren't performing Yeah.

To the optimum level that they can perform.

- Alright, thanks Paul.

Dr.

Paul Beck, OSU extension beef cattle specialist here at Oklahoma State University.

And if you'd like some links to some information that Paul talked about, just go to our website, sunup.OKstate.edu.

- Hello, Oklahoma Emma White here with your weekly Mesonet weather report.

We've hit freezing in some parts of the state and our highs are in the seventies right now, so we're having that feeling of fall in Oklahoma and something else is feeling that fall too, the cattle.

Here is a map of the cattle comfort index for Wednesday, October 22nd.

You might notice that the color range on the bar, we don't see any reds, finally.

This means that the cattle are getting more comfortable with the cooler temperatures.

Corresponding with this, the water demand also declines when the temperature declines.

You might notice that the numbers on this map for October 22nd are much near to the middle of the bar rather than at the top with high water demand, which midsummers often bring due to the decreasing incoming solar radiation and the lower temperatures, the cattle comfort index has been trending down.

As this graph shows for the last 45 days through October 22nd in Arnett Oklahoma, the red line indicates the temperature and the blue shading represents the cattle comfort temperature.

According to this graph, both the temperature and the cattle comfort temperature are trending downwards.

Finally, the Cattle Comfort Index also provides the forecast for a few days, which is shaded in the lighter blue.

The forecast allows the producer to prepare the appropriate food and water in advance.

On the same forecast tool, the past 10 days of Cattle comfort index are also displayed as we enter the winter.

The cattle comfort index could enter cold caution or cold danger as shown in the color bar on the left.

Wind is a large cause of the cattle feeling colder than the air temperature in the winter.

During the winter, cattle will require more feed for their faster metabolisms to maintain and gain weight.

For the next few weeks, though the cattle comfort index map will likely show gray colors during the daytime indicating the cattle are fairly comfortable, like this graph shows.

Gary McManus is up next with your state climatology report.

- Thanks Emma and good morning everyone.

Well hopefully as you're watching this, you're either getting rain or you've gotten rain and lots of it, but not too much.

Is that too much to ask of Mother Nature?

We definitely need some help here in Oklahoma with this rainfall coming in supposedly this weekend.

I hope we have a good drought monitor reset, but let's look at the map and where we are right now.

Well, the same basic story.

We have a big blob of moderate to severe drought in central Oklahoma extending over into East central Oklahoma, getting close to north central, south central Oklahoma.

We also have another blob down in southwest Oklahoma.

Now the only big changes from last week are those blobs of severe drought.

The darker brown areas have expanded a little bit.

So again, this is where we need that rainfall to put the stop to this.

Not only to put a stop to it, but hopefully reverse it a little bit.

I thought it'd be good to take a look at where we were before this rainfall hit.

So let's take a look at the consecutive days with less than a quarter inch rainfall map in some areas in central Oklahoma up to 54, 55 days.

So not good, but a large area extending down to southwest Oklahoma and up into northwest Oklahoma.

Basically from 25 to 30 to even 40, 50 days.

Just depends on where you are, but just a long dry spell.

Way too long than what we had hoped to see.

And finally, let's take a look at the departure from normal rainfall map from the Mesonet for the last 90 days.

Again going back to mid-July, you can see those areas in the oranges and the, and then the darker oranges from four to as much as seven inches below normal.

So just an overall bad pattern since mid-July, especially for that southeastern two thirds of the state.

Hopefully this is reversed with the, with the rainfall we got later in this week and into the weekend.

So since we're a little bit uncertain of where that rain has possibly fallen, we will take a good look at it next week and hopefully do some erasing on that drought monitor map.

That's it for this time.

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

- We are here now with OSU extension livestock marketing specialist, Dr.

Darryl Peel.

And Darrel, it's starting to feel like fall and the fall run of calves is starting to kind of pick up.

What's the, what's the situation at Livestock auctions?

- You know, we've kind of changed the timing this year a little bit compared to normal.

We had record high cattle prices in the summer and some producers got nervous that those markets wouldn't be there this fall.

So for about eight weeks from mid-July through the first week of September, we had auction volumes that were above year ago levels and then it flipped and those calves were marketed early.

They normally would've been marketed later for the last six weeks, we've had volumes that were down on a year over year basis.

So I think that's gonna change the, the nature of the fall run a little bit.

It won't be as big as it would have been otherwise.

- Yeah.

What about prices?

Are those about normal for what we expect to see?

- You know, prices have remained very strong.

We've had a lot of volatility in these markets, but in general, cattle prices have been strong.

We are not seeing the normal seasonal pressure on calf prices in particular.

And you know, at that we haven't even had, you know, good wheat pasture conditions or anything yet to really stimulate even more demand.

- Yeah.

So kind of moving to something else, we've been hearing a lot about Argentina buying beef from Argentina.

How is that gonna affect our cattle markets?

- Yeah, so there were some announcements over the weekend that we might buy beef from Argentina, ostensibly to help reduce beef prices in the US it, it won't have that impact.

We buy very little beef from Argentina, they represent about 2% of our total beef imports.

So it's, it's, you know, it's more of a headline kind of a statement than anything else.

It, you know, it really won't change things in the US but it's, it's another one of those sources that, that does add a lot of uncertainty and volatility to the markets.

Cattle markets obviously reacted, the futures markets in particular reacted very strongly last, you know, on a Friday they were down limit down and then, you know, we get over it, we figure out it's probably not what it really seems and they bounce back.

But a lot of volatility and uncertainty for producers.

- Yeah.

And we're still in the middle of a government shutdown.

Is that affecting cattle markets at all?

- Well, yeah, increasingly, the longer we go, we're not getting any updated data.

So the vacuum of information becomes more and more of an issue.

You know, markets try to go on, we are at least getting price reporting, but at the same time we're not getting any fundamental data.

So that becomes more of an issue as more time goes on.

- Yeah.

And moving into the winter, how is the wheat and forage prospects looking?

- You know, in, in 1st of September, thereabouts, we had really high hopes for wheat pasture this year and then it turned hot and dry and those, those hopes have faded somewhat since then.

It looks like as we're filming this, that we're probably due for some rain here in the next few days and that would be great if we get that.

It would be very timely, kind of get us back on track.

So I think when it's all said and done, we'll probably wind up with quite a bit of wheat pasture, perhaps more wheat pasture than we effectively have cattle to stock it.

But it's been kind of a struggle for the last six weeks or so.

- Yeah, a lot to think about.

Right.

What's your recommendation for producers?

- You know, main thing is just sort of stick to your plan, do what you normally do.

If it's fall of the year, hopefully you're weaning calves right now.

Getting them ready to market, adding value to 'em by doing those things that we talk about.

You know, the markets are still hanging in there.

In fact, they're very strong counter seasonally strong right now.

So keep doing, keep doing what you expected to do.

- Alright, thanks Daryl.

- You bet.

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

Our topic this week is mature cow size relative to profit potential and revenue generated relative to calf sales out of a commercial cow calf operation.

I arrive at that topic this week based on some follow up questions that we have had to the articles from the past couple of weeks.

And we start off by just addressing some realities in the commercial cow calf sector in the United States.

Over the past few decades, our mature cow sizes went up pretty substantially.

There's a growing amount of empirical evidence that tells us that there's about a 10 to one relationship, meaning that if we increase mature cow size by about a hundred pounds, we only see 10 pounds of increase in a calf weaning weight.

There's research collected that tells us that as cows get bigger, they wean off a lower percentage of their mature weight.

It's easier for a thousand pound cow to wean off close to 45, 50% of her mature weight.

Whereas cows get out there from 14 to 1600 pounds, it's more of a struggle and they're probably gonna be at 30 some percent, maybe get as high as 40% on average of their mature weight.

If we do some basic forage budgeting and think about mature cow size and its impact on the forage dry matter intake that a cow needs annually, we see that for every a hundred head of thousand pound cows that we run, we could run about 71 head of 1400 pound cows.

And so it's, today we worked through some math relative to current calf markets, and assuming a 90% calf crop weaned, looking at 71 1400 pound cows versus a hundred head of thousand pound cows, assuming the thousand pound cows are gonna wean off calves at about 450 pounds.

Whereas our 1400 pound cows are gonna wean off about 500 pound calves equal steer heifer split and current report, which is a little bit less per pound for those heavier calves.

If we work through a 90% calf crop, those weaning weights and think about a value of 4.65 a pound for 450 pound calves versus 4.35 a pound for the 500 pound calves.

Those a hundred head of thousand pound cows based on additional calves and additional weaning weight at a higher value actually return a little over $47,000 more per calf crop than the 71 head of 1400 pound cows.

It's important that we have growth, obviously in the cow calf sector.

We sell calves based on pay weight, that's our primary profit center, and we should put selection pressure on growth, be it at weaning as yearling.

If we're retaining ownership past that, maybe it's those final finished weights or carcass weights, but that needs to be selection pressure applied relative to mature cal size.

We know that these positive genetic relationships exist between birth weight, weaning weight, yearling weight, post weaning gain, mature weight, mature height, finish weights and carcass weights.

And yet through EPD use and trying to make, keep birth weights down and maintain calving ease, we have been able to do that over the past 30 plus years while spiking weaning weight and yearling weight.

What have we not done?

Probably put enough selection pressure on the backside of that growth curve and made sure that mature cow size didn't get too out of hand.

The point is all these traits are moderate to high inheritability.

A proper and intended breeding program that addresses mature size relative to growth can be accomplished.

The heritability tell us it can be.

So we've got a success story from our past that tells us we can address mature cow size without compromising the growth that we want in the calves we produce.

I hope this helps.

Appreciate your feedback questions from the past couple weeks.

Have a good weekend.

And as always, thank you for joining us on Cow Calf Corner.

- I'm Mark Turner wildlife extension specialist here at OSU.

And today we're gonna be talking about deer antlers.

Here in Oklahoma, we have three native species of deer.

We have whitetailed deer, which are relatively common across most of the state.

And I'm holding a whitetailed deer antler here.

We also have mule deer and elk.

Deer are, are really unique in that they grow antlers.

And you'll notice that I'm not calling them horns.

That's, that's really common to hear folks talk about deer growing large horns.

And of course that's not the case.

Deer actually produce antlers.

Antlers are different from horns in several ways.

First, horns are primarily made up of keratin, which is actually the same thing that's, that's making up most of your fingernails and your hair.

Whereas antlers are primarily composed of bone.

The other main difference is that horns are grown throughout the life of an animal.

So if a, if an animal such as a bison or a a goat or a sheep damages that horn, it actually can't regrow that portion of the horn.

They do grow throughout the life of the animal, but if it's damaged, it really can't repair that.

Antlers, on the other hand, are grown every single year.

So an animal will produce an antler during the growing season and then shed it that following winter.

And of course that takes a lot of energy and nutrients.

But the benefit is that if a buck breaks his antler fighting with another male during the breeding season, he of course can then grow a, a larger antler the next year.

And, and he doesn't suffer from that because antlers do serve an important purpose for deer in that they're used for fighting and females will actually select to breed with males that have larger antlers.

So they're a really unique structure, they're really important.

And of course a lot of hunters are interested in managing for larger antler deer on their properties, and they're interested in what they can actually do to potentially have larger deer.

There's three things that primarily govern antler size.

First being age, of course, bucks up to about the age of five and a half years old, produce larger antlers each year.

So a buck that's only a year old is gonna produce smaller antlers compared to whenever he's at full maturity at five and a half.

And then they maintain a relatively large antler size for several years after that.

So if you're interested in producing larger antler bucks, the first thing would be simply allow males to reach older age classes.

The second is nutrition, certainly areas that have more agriculture as well as properties that are managing for high quality native plant communities.

Composed of a lot of forbes that are gonna be high in protein during the summertime, those tend to produce larger antler deer than places that are dominated by closed canopy forests or non-native pasture grasses.

And then the final thing that governs antler size is genetics.

Of course, just like some people are taller than others and some people are shorter than others, some bucks are going to grow and have the ability to grow larger antlers than others.

However, we really can't do anything to manage for genetics and free ranging populations.

And so certainly for managers interested in growing larger antler deer, they can simply allow deer to reach older age classes and also consider providing high quality forge, especially during the time that bucks are growing antlers in the summertime, bucks begin to antler growth early in the spring and the the antler actually grows out of a structure on the buck's head called a pedicle.

And in fact, in the early spring and, and on into the summer, they can grow up to about an inch every four days.

So they, they grow relatively rapidly.

In fact, it's one of the fastest growing tissues that, that we know of in the natural world.

If a buck runs into a fence or hits a tree limb during velvet, he can't actually damage the antler and it will bleed slightly and, and could potentially cause the antler to be slightly misshapen.

Of course, they can heal up from that.

But that, but that does explain some antler abnormalities that you see on deer during the fall.

As, as we get into the fall, they then shed that velvet and we get what we would see here, which is hard antler when that antler is, is, is calcified and mineralized and it is can then be used for, for things like fighting during the breeding season.

And then of course, as we get into the winter after the breeding season, they will drop these typically in Oklahoma that occurs in February, late later in February and on into March.

For more information on deer management and deer biology, check out some of the resources on the sunup website.

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

A reminder that you can see sunup anytime on our website, stream us anytime at youtube.com/sunup tv and also follow us on our social media.

I'm Lyndall Stout.

Have a great week everyone.

And remember, Oklahoma agriculture starts at Sunup.