(upbeat music playing) - Hello everyone and welcome to SUNUP.

I'm Lyndall Stout.

We finally saw some much needed and welcome rainfall this past week over many parts of the state that received well over an inch of rain.

We'll have much more on how the rain may have impacted the drought, coming up a little later in the Mezzanotte Report.

But first, we're taking a look at the progress of the wheat crop.

Here's SUNUP's, Kurtis Hair and Dr. Amanda Silva, our Extension Small Grain Specialist.

- Well, it's been a long time since I could say we got standing water in the field and mud on our boots.

So Amanda, obviously it rained.

Is this a crop-saving rain maybe?

- Yeah, so this is what we call "A billion dollar rain", especially for our grain production.

As far as forage, it will definitely help to have this rain.

When we look at all of our fields planted so far, none of them were planted into moisture, except for two locations.

So, Chico Che and Apache.

And so, when we think like that, effective planting date was the date this rain started.

And yeah, so this, especially if the weather gets warmer with all this moisture now, we'll see some growth and development this fall.

- So with those producers who, obviously a lot of producers dusted in wheat, like you mentioned, for this rain event though, there were a lot of producers that were in areas that got a lot of rain all at once.

So, is that bad for the crop?

- Yeah, and actually that was my fear too, when I saw all the amount of rain that we were getting in some locations, because depending on soil types, especially those that are more clay soils, we could have soil crusting.

And yeah, that can be an issue with emergence and maybe in some cases you would require reseeding.

And so it will depend.

- Well, with this rain and more rain in the forecast, for the producers that haven't been able to plant and were thinking they might not be able to plant, what's the optimal planting window?

Is that already passed?

- No, it hasn't passed.

I mean, it depends where you are in Oklahoma that planting date can vary.

But for example, producers in southwest Oklahoma they still have time for planting.

Actually in most of, except for the panhandle, most of the state we still have... we are still fine with the time we have.

And here we are talking about grain production, of course.

And so we do have studies looking at late clenching day looking for the adaptation for late clenching especially.

And that's actually what we are looking for in situations like this.

For example, if we would get a lot of rain right now and it would take us out of the field for a long time pushing us to that end of November type of thing.

So that's kind of the research that we are doing, that we have going on, just looking at management practices and varieties that could be adapted for that very late planting scenario.

But right now we are still good.

We are just very thankful for this rain.

That's really what we need at this stage.

So this is one step guarantee we are going to have a successful crop.

- Well, and just to mention, we're standing right now in front of a research plot that's been irrigated and so there is some wheat coming up, but a lot of fields don't look like this just to kind of let producers know that emergence still hasn't probably have taken effect yet but given the rain and the weather, it could pretty fast.

- Yeah, yeah.

Yes.

And so we do, we have a lot of fields that we dusted in and plants have not came out yet.

Yes, exactly.

So this was irrigated.

So just a little bit to promote that germination which usually we don't need much.

When you look at the USGA reports, you see that maybe planting date we were not very, very behind especially because a lot of people dusted in and trying to get into that insurance window.

But when you look at emergence, we are really behind on that long term average.

And that is because we did not have any moisture at all to drive germination.

So... - And how does that impact things long term for a producer's production?

- It will move the effective planting date later in the season.

So that crop you'll have less time.

Especially for forage production, you will have less time to accumulate biomass and have enough forage to feed cattle in winter months.

And so that is extremely important in dual purpose systems or forage only systems.

- All right.

Thanks Amanda.

We'll check back in with you in a few weeks.

Dr. Amanda Silva, Small Grain Specialist here at Oklahoma State University.

And if you'd like some more information about what Amanda talked about go to our website, sunup.okstate.edu.

(upbeat music) - Welcome to this week's Mesonet Weather Report.

I'm Wes Lee.

When a good widespread rain occurs, you don't wanna miss out because you don't know how long it'll be till the next rain event comes around.

Early last week, a two-day rain drops some nice rainfall totals in all but the far northwest and panhandle regions.

One- to two-inch totals were common elsewhere, and a strip from Latimer to Adair Counties received four to five inches.

This improved our soil moisture levels tremendously in the shallower zones, and it helped some at even deeper depths.

This map from midweek shows the four-inch percent plant available water.

It shows the amount of water from the surface of the ground down to four inches that plants would be able to extract and use.

You can see where it rained, everything is in good shape in this zone, indicated by the green color and near 100%.

Not so good in the panhandle, shown by the reds.

Looking a little deeper, down to 16 inches, you can see the areas that got some of the heavier rain amounts looking pretty good, but a lot of yellow indicates more room for improvement.

And lastly, our deepest map showing soil moistures down to 32 inches where no sites reached the hundred percent mark.

Now, here's Gary with a better-looking drought map for some.

- Thanks, Wes, and good morning, everyone.

Well, as Wes told you, we finally got some decent rains in the state over the past week.

Now, did it help everybody?

And what did it do to the drought monitor map?

Let's take a look.

Well, we do have some pretty good improvements down across southwest Oklahoma, over in far east Oklahoma, and a reduction in the intensity of the drought across parts of central, down into south central Oklahoma.

But up into northwestern Oklahoma and the panhandle, unfortunately, we saw more intensification.

So, more of that D3, D4 extreme to exceptional drought.

Those are those red colors.

So, it just depends on where you were where it rained pretty good.

It certainly helped.

If you didn't get much rain, the drought got a little bit worse.

We can see that on the Mesonet rainfall maps.

Let's start out with the consecutive days with less than a quarter inch of rainfall.

So, this is before that good rain, and we see parts of northwestern, north central Oklahoma over to northeast Oklahoma, far southwest Oklahoma, and other parts of the state, up around 50, 51, 52 days without a quarter inch of rain.

Some parts of northwest Oklahoma, up to 85 days.

Now, after that rainfall, the map looks incredibly different.

So, much of the southeastern, let's say four-fifths of the state in good shape that got at least a quarter inch of rainfall.

But that northwest corner up into the panhandle still going on 40, 50, 60 days, even in some cases up above 80 days.

So, those are the areas that missed out on that rain.

Pretty easy to see.

We can all see those vast differences in the percent of normal rainfall maps for the previous 30 days.

Now, this first map is from before the good rains.

Again, we see much of the state, less than 25% of normal rainfall in that 30-day period, and many cases less than the 10% of normal in that period.

So, not too good there.

But then we look after the good rains this week, and we see much of the state from about I-40 South in southwest Oklahoma, over in parts of eastern Oklahoma.

We are upping those numbers to above normal rainfall, and then much of the state to the areas outside of that, we see getting a little bit closer to normal, a hundred percent.

So we have a few more chances of rain coming up, and then it's just what we're gonna get after that.

That's the key in ending this drought, but also stopping it in its tracks in northwest Oklahoma.

That's it for this time.

(upbeat music) We'll see you next time on the Mesonet Weather Report.

- Dr. Derrell Peel, our livestock marketing specialist, joins us now.

Derrell, a lot of people smiling because we saw some nice rain this week.

How will this impact the situation for cattle producers?

- Well, obviously any rain helps, right?

We've been through some extremely dry conditions.

So, the rain is helpful.

You know, we have to be realistic about what it's gonna do for us.

So, it can help the wheat pasture.

Other cool season forages may see some benefit from this.

But in reality, we're not gonna grow a lot of new forage this time of year other than those.

We're not gonna make a lot more hay.

So I think, for a lot of producers, it doesn't maybe change the immediate situation all that much, but obviously it's the first step in curing the drought, and maybe sets us up for a lot more help down the road.

- How are the feeder cattle markets performing this fall, and will this rain help out in that area?

- Well, the markets started in September pretty high, almost as high as they were last spring.

They did see some pressure in October and dropped a little bit.

Some of that may be seasonal pressure, but a lot of it had to do with the fact that the outside markets were weaker.

Future's markets had dropped.

Now we've seen the future's markets come back, and the feeder cow markets have already started to turn around, which is a little unusual for this time of the year.

The other thing we're watching, of course, is that... - The volumes have been high all summer.

We've been marketing cattle early, and this last week for the first time in Oklahoma, we've seen a year over year decrease in that feeder volume.

So you know, when you add to that and then some rain and the potential for at least some later wheat pasture, all of that is probably supportive for the markets.

- Let's hope so.

Now, what are do latest Cattle On Feed Report indicate about the cattle market conditions?

- You know, the October Cattle On Feed Report showed that placements in September decreased, the biggest decrease in over a year, and then the marketings were, well, not higher than expected, but higher than last year.

So the combination of those brought the On Feed inventory for October 1st down below a year ago for the first time this year.

We've been expecting this to turn at some point but because of the drought, we've been placing cattle early, we've been moving cattle into the feed lots.

We think maybe now we're at the end of that and we will see these numbers tighten up and the feed lot production begin to slow down as we go forward.

- It's hard to believe we're winding down October already.

What is your outlook for the remainder of the year?

- Well, we've sort of expected all year that we would see eventually turn to tighter conditions from a cattle number standpoint, from a cattle slaughter standpoint and beef production.

And we haven't really seen that yet but we think it's about to turn.

So as we finish out this year, I think we'll start to see beef production decrease on a year over year basis.

Cattle slaughter will decrease some as we go forward and certainly into next year, then, our expectations are for generally tighter conditions on the supply side of this market, and that'll all be supportive for prices as we go forward.

- Okay, we'll keep us posted, Darrell.

Thanks a lot.

We'll see you next time.

(upbeat music) - Good morning, Oklahoma, and welcome to Cow-Calf Corner.

This week we continue to talk about some of the financial opportunities that lie ahead for us as a result of the drought of the summer we've lived through.

And this week's topic is, is it the appropriate time to cull our bulls?

And we'll work through some numbers that we would get into as far as winter feed costs, salvage value of those bulls, and what we could potentially repopulate with in terms of better genetics next spring.

But the first thing to get out in this morning's topic is the concept that I always liken herd bulls to professional athletes.

They have a prime of life.

It's typically between the ages of about two and five, when we can expect them to cover 25 to 35 cows a breeding season.

Takes them a while to reach that prime, up to about the age of two.

And I always say that bulls that are past the age of five or six are on borrowed time.

Liken this example to the Tom Brady, Joe Namath example.

Tom Brady's still winning Super Bowls past the age of 40 but for every one of Tom Brady, there's hundreds, if not thousands of quarterbacks that got injured early.

Joe Namath won a Super Bowl at the age of 26 and was effectively hindered by knee injuries after that, and now to the NFL or ineffective by the age of 30.

Herd bulls are a lot the same.

The life of a herd bull is full of perils.

They work on all sorts of terrain, sand, clay, snow, mud, they mount any cow and any natural service can result in injury, feet, legs, sex organs.

Bulls get more cantankerous and harder to be around and harder to work with as they get older.

They fight with other bulls in the off season, and if you've got a spring calving herd of cows, your herd bulls right now are effectively off duty for about six months before next spring's turnout.

If we think of 200 days of a one ton bull eating 2% of his body weight and forage dry matter a day, that's about four ton that he's gonna consume before he goes back on duty at turnout next spring.

At current hay prices, say $200, it's hung, delivered for hay.

He's gonna eat about $800 worth of hay between now and when he goes back to work.

Most recent USDA price report for Oklahoma that I've seen indicates that cull bulls are worth about $1 in salvage value a pound right now.

We've got a one ton bull, he's worth $2,000 salvage value to cash in.

We take that salvage value and what we're gonna feed him for the next six months, that's around $2,800 that we could cash in right now or save.

That goes a long way toward the purchase of repopulating with bulls next spring.

Other thing to take into consideration is just genetic trend as a result of successful breeding programs by purebred breeders.

If we look at genetic trend or average EPDs by birth year, and at any Sire Summary for any of our beef breeds, we see that over time, whether it's last year to this year or just going back 10, 20 years, we see that the genetics for (indistinct) improve, the genetics for growth traits like weaning and yearling improve, carcass traits like additional marbling and rib eye improve.

Reproductive traits, maternal traits, things like milk, heifer fertility.

All those things get better as a result of selection and successful breeding programs in the purebred sector over time.

- Right now, as we look at financial opportunities to set ahead of us, I'm not suggesting you call every bull the really good ones you like, but take a look at age, what they weigh, how long they've been around, what you could salvage them for, and what you could save in winter feed costs, may go a long way to repopulating your bull battery with genetically-superior, younger bulls next spring.

Thanks for joining us this week.

(folk music) - It's that time in the show where we check in with our Crop Marketing Specialist, Dr. Kim Anderson.

So Kim, is there any big news this week?

- I don't think there's any big news and there hadn't been any big price moves.

You look at the wheat market, it's continuing to just waller its way lower as we go down through there.

You look at the range, you go back a couple months it's down, you know, $7.80 or so.

We got up to $9.30, somewhere in that vicinity.

We're back in just right at $9, a little bit below that.

It's wallering around, so not much news there.

You look at the corn market, of course we got the corn harvest going on, and it's moving along and on the bottom half of that harvest the range from $7.36 to $7.68, currently around $7.60.

Really sideways corn movement.

Same with soybeans, especially beans.

You go back a month or so with up over $14.

We went down to $13.30, back up to around $13.60 or so.

So those prices again, are just moving sideways and that just tells you not much move in the market.

Now with cotton, you go back two months, we had $1.18 cotton.

we are down to around $.76 now.

You go back a week, we were up around $0.85 and dropped off.

Came up just a little bit, and you wonder what's happening with cotton when you've got the drought, when you look at the acres planted versus expected harvested.

They're expecting 43% of our cotton acres to be abandoned.

You're looking at a 21% decline in US cotton production and those prices have been coming down.

But if you look at the world cotton production, it's right at average.

And so we've got cotton in the world, we just don't have it in the United States.

Cotton prices looks like they're bottom out in the low $0.80s here.

- Finally got some rain, decent amounts, more than a decent amount in a lot of parts of the state, so how's that gonna impact farmers?

- Well, it's not gonna have any impact on prices right now, and if you look on out to what you can forward contract for, no impact there.

What it's gonna do, is it's gonna make farmer's lives and decision-making a little better.

It gives them, it increases the odds that they're gonna have bushels to sell, and it's gonna let them sleep at night.

And when you can sleep at night, you make better decisions.

- I know I do.

So for the past couple of weeks we've been talking about Russia's war with Ukraine.

So any news there?

- Well, it's still going on.

Ukraine is still gaining some territory there.

Russia, internally, is having some problems there.

There's a lot of criticism on President Putin in his war efforts.

Some people are calling for the scorched-earth war in Ukraine where you just go in and wipe out the whole thing.

Also on November the 19th, the deadline for allowing Ukraine to export to agriculture products and Russia has gotta make a decision on that.

And the market's vacillating back and forth of where they're gonna continue or where they're gonna cut it off.

- Shifting back to the markets, are there any other concerns that you have?

- Well, this week the market's been talking about a diesel shortage.

They're talking about the levels of diesel in the storages.

It hasn't been this low since 2008.

And the reason is that is we were importing Russian oil, it was coming into the Gulf refineries, and they were refining diesel.

That oil's been cut off, and so we have less diesel being refined and we're running into a diesel shortage.

Now that doesn't mean farmers and truckers can't get diesel.

That just means they're gonna pay a significantly higher price for it.

And if you need a large amount of it, you better plan ahead on getting that diesel.

- Is there any good news?

- Oh yeah, there's some good news.

We've got the rain.

That's gotta be good news.

That increases the odds we'll get some production.

Good news, we're one day closer to finishing the drought and we're one day closer to getting an all our wheat planted and then we'll get, It's not how much rain you get it's do you get timely rains.

And over the past, we tend to get that.

- And we have more rain in the forecast.

- There you go.

- All right, thanks Kim.

Dr. Kim Anderson, crop marking specialist here at Oklahoma State University.

- Talking pecans now and how the recent freeze may impact this year's crop.

OSU extension, fruit and nuts specialist, Becky Carroll, gets us up to speed.

- We've gone through probably some of the driest weather that we've had in over a hundred years during an important phase of nut development.

And so we were really dry during the sizing time, which is June, and July, and early August, and then we continue to be dry in August, September, and in October.

And that early timeframe in the summer is when the nuts are sizing.

And so they're probably gonna be much smaller.

But because we didn't have the rain to fill them, that's probably a good thing, Because if the nuts were large, then it would require more water to fill them out and get good quality.

And so this year with smaller pecans, the little water that we did have, will go ahead and fill them out.

And so we're hoping that we'll have small pecans.

- With high quality nut fill.

We were really early in October.

The 19th is the the freeze date that we had.

And so our trees were fully loaded with leaves and a lot of the nuts had not opened yet.

Now, on the early ripening varieties like Kanza and Pawnee, the shucks had already start to split and they started to drop.

And so once those shucks split open, that indicates that that nut is ripe and can be harvested.

But until that shuck splits, those nuts are kind of sensitive to freeze.

So if we get to maybe 28 or below for an hour or more, those shucks can be frozen closed.

And then when it's time to harvest, they're not gonna be able to come out of the shucks.

We had a recent heavy rain event that was pretty much statewide, or in the pecan growing areas at least.

And so that inch and a half to two inches of rainfall is probably not gonna do a lot for this year's crop.

It's going to keep our growers out of the harvest time for a few days, but it's gonna help the trees maybe a little bit going into the winter.

Going into harvest right now, we're kind of concerned about the production.

In talking to growers across the state, some of them have lost their entire crop or most of it due to that freeze.

So they're frozen in the shucks, they're not gonna be able to harvest them.

But we were talking earlier in the summer about maybe having a smaller crop than average, maybe about 11 million pounds.

But I did hear some of the growers that grow native pecans talking that it may be cutting that in half.

So it's hard to say just yet based on we're not really starting to harvest native pecans.

But talking to some of them, some of the growers, they're saying that their crop is gonna be okay, but maybe not a full crop.

(bluegrass music) - Finally, today, OSU Extension Beef Cattle Specialist, Dr. Rosslyn Biggs, tells us about a program for cattle producers who are dealing with the veterinarian shortages.

- Beginning in 2019, Oklahoma State put together a cross-disciplinary team between the College of Veterinary Medicine, the Ferguson College of Agriculture, including Extension as well, to focus on the need for veterinarians in the food animal sector.

We knew there was an issue with rural veterinary shortage, particularly in Oklahoma.

So in 2019, we put forward a grant and thanks to the USDA National Institute for Food and Agriculture, we were awarded a grant to establish what's called the Integrated Beef Cattle Program for Veterinarians.

We started this program by surveying veterinarians, veterinarian students, and beef cattle producers.

What we found from veterinarians is that we had openings for veterinarians in over 40 counties in the state of Oklahoma.

And so we knew there was a need.

What we wanted to do past that was put together a program where we matched veterinary students with an interest in beef cattle medicine alongside veterinarians.

And in early 2022, we launched the Integrated Beef Cattle Program.

This put 20 beef cattle veterinarians in the state of Oklahoma alongside 20 veterinary students from Oklahoma State.

We've concluded that program just in the past few weeks here in the fall.

And that program focused on a variety of topics, from leadership and communication, to practice management, to developing skills, analyzing data, to really create a broader toolkit of skills for those practices in rural Oklahoma to make sure that they're sustainable and able to provide extended services to the beef cattle producers.

As we look into 2023, we're continuing with that grant funding.

And we actually have over 50 veterinary students from Oklahoma State interested in participating in the program.

From that 50, we will select 20.

And we're also looking for Oklahoma beef cattle veterinarians and those from surrounding states to participate in the program too.

Priority will be given to Oklahoma veterinarians.

But we're looking to expand beyond our borders.

Because what we've seen is we're making connections, we're networking these veterinarians with veterinary students.

And we feel that that's really important as we look across our team that's able to support us from the agricultural economic standpoint, from the animal science standpoint, from the ag leadership standpoint, as well as veterinary medicine to bring these people together.

So hopefully we can address the shortages we have in the rural space.

(bluegrass music) - That'll do it for us this week.

Remember, you can see, "SUNUP" anytime at sunup.okstate.edu.

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.

(gentle music)