(light country music) - Hello, everyone, and welcome to "SUNUP."

I'm Lyndall Stout.

We have a real treat for you today, a look back at some of our favorite "SUNUP" stories from over the years.

But first, we're talking about the expiration of the Farm Bill this past week with Dr. Amy Hagerman.

- So on September 30th, our 2018 Farm Bill did expire.

We didn't get a continuation of that.

The focus in Washington was more on the continuation of the budget.

So we got a continuing resolution on the budget for 45 days, but we did not get a continuation on the Farm Bill.

That's important because it affects some of the near-term versus longer-term impacts of that.

And it also affects the timeline of when we might see conversation around a Farm Bill.

- Sure, as we know, October, kind of a busy time for programs.

What does all this mean for sign-ups?

- Yeah, so October, like you said, October and March, those are our two busy times for program sign-ups.

And we've got crop reports and things that go in.

So the continuing resolution was very important, because it kept our USDA offices open for people to turn in their crop reports, to sign up for their NAP coverage.

But the Farm Bill actually has some longevity even beyond official expiration, because things run on marketing years for a lot of our programs.

So through the end of the calendar year, we're still under budget for current marketing years for a lot of programs, especially our commodity programs.

And then also, we can think about some of our permanent legislation that sits underneath the Farm Bill.

So crop insurance continues going forward because it has permanent legislation underneath it.

So for crop insurance and disaster programs, those will continue in the coming months.

The big thing is our commodity programs if we go past the first of the year.

Because that's when we start going into new marketing years.

Dairy starts January 1.

Then we start getting into the crops as we go on into the spring.

And we're reverting to very old permanent legislation if that happens.

- A lot of what ifs, obviously, on the table.

What are you seeing or hearing in terms of when we might get a new Farm Bill or when they'll start turning their discussions that direction?

- So because we are on a 45-day continuing resolution for the budget, I expect we'll see a lotta conversation around the budget in the coming weeks.

That's really important for the Farm Bill as well, because the budget determines the money for a lot of those programs.

Some of the authorizations, we definitely need those in the near term, but the budget's very important for the Farm Bill discussion as well.

I anticipate that we will get some sort of continuation on the Farm Bill that will allow us to bring Farm Bill discussions out into the spring at the very least.

It's gonna take time to put together a Farm Bill.

The fastest we've ever seen a Farm Bill come together is about seven months.

So we know that there needs to be some time there to develop a Farm Bill, to get it through the entire legislative process it has to go through.

So I do anticipate some time between new and December 31st, we'll need to see either a longer continuation of 2018 Farm Bill programs as they stand or, perhaps, a shorter continuation in expectation that some changes will occur.

- It can be kind of an anxious time for producers.

Do you have some guidance for them as things progress?

- I think just paying attention to risk management in general for your whole farm.

Keeping in mind that crop insurance is under permanent legislation, how to utilize that for the operation, thinking about those disaster programs, which are also on some permanent legislation for the livestock programs.

Although, some of the crop programs are more ad hoc at this point.

And just staying in close touch with what the deadlines are and what changes might be on the horizon.

And OSU Extension will definitely be on the front line, making sure we know what those changes are, getting that information out to our educators so that it's being distributed to producers.

- Of course, and we'll have you on "SUNUP" anytime you wanna be on.

So.

- Absolutely.

- Amy, great information, thanks a lot, and I'm sure we'll see you again very soon.

- Thank you, yeah.

(light country music) - Welcome to the Mesonet weather report.

I'm Wes Lee.

Fall temperatures finally arrived, and with them came some much-needed rain for parts of the state.

As of Thursday morning, this five-day rainfall map shows rain scattered across all parts of the state.

A couple of the driest parts getting decent rains were the end of the panhandle and the south-central region.

The wettest Mesonet station was the Newport station near Ardmore, recording 4.65 inches of rain.

- The radar indicated rainfalls shown by the two and a half mile color pixels on the map indicate even higher amounts in the southeastern tip of the state, but no Mesonet station was close enough to record the actual rainfall total.

This rain tremendously helped soil moisture totals, especially in the south central region.

From Norman to Walters to Durant, the fractional water index went from very dry to very wet on the four inch sensor, but we still see the brown band across far southwest up to Osage County along with Harper County, where soil moisture is severely limited.

After a very warm September, we finally got to see high temperatures back down to normal ranges.

Forecasted for Saturday will even be temps well below normal, but then expect a return to higher than normal temperatures for next week.

Gary is up next with some longer term maps for the state.

- Thanks, Wes, and good morning everyone.

Well, we had some really good rains, and that's awesome.

Unfortunately, they came after the 7:00 am Tuesday cutoff for this week's drought monitor map, so we'll see those improvements, hopefully, on next week's map, but let's take a look at this week's map and see where we're at.

Well, unfortunately we saw more worsening rather than improvements.

We did see some removal of drought across the far eastern part of Oklahoma.

That's a leftover from last week's really good rainfall over in that region, but we also saw some increases in drought across the southwestern half of the state, especially down across the south central and southwestern parts.

Remember, Southwestern Oklahoma's where that long-term drought holds sway and the rest of the state, at least across the southwestern half, is where that flash drought is occurring.

Also, up in North Central Oklahoma, we still have that long-term drought area up there, so hopefully, lots of improvements coming next week.

If we take a look at the topsoil moisture, a percent short to very short from the USDA.

Remember, these are before the good rains.

So 71% of the state was short to very short topsoil moisture conditions.

That's in line with the states around us, Kansas at 72, Texas, 78%, New Mexico and Louisiana, a little bit worse, 80 and 83%, so hopefully, everybody got some good rains and we can improve much of the southern plains.

subsoil moisture, not too much better, but at least it is an improvement, 67% of the state with short to very short conditions in those subsoil, so again, these are maps that we should see improvements in as we get into next week, and let's talk about next week, what's the weather looking like for that period?

Well, we do see the above normal temperatures coming back to the state.

All of Oklahoma sees increased odds of above normal temperatures.

When we look at the precipitation, we do see we're in a increased odds of below normal precipitation.

It's not drastically below or at least the odds aren't drastically below, so hopefully, this moves on out of here and we get back to some rainy times that we saw last week and this week.

So it doesn't take a lot of rainfall to get out of a flash drought.

It does take a lot of rainfall to get out of that long-term drought up in North Central and Southwest Oklahoma, so those are the areas we really need to concentrate that rainfall in.

That's it for this time, we'll see you next time on the "Mesonet Weather Report."

- Taking a look back now at a SUNUP favorite.

With the start of OQBN in sales this fall, it's the perfect time to look back at when we met one of the youngest participants ever in the program, here's SUNUP's Kurtis Hair.

- [Kurtis] It's a crisp fall morning on the Miller Family Farm.

Perfect conditions for the hardest working ranch hand on this production.

(car door slams) (Sadie breathes heavily) For five-year-old Sadie Miller, working cattle's her favorite thing to do, although some days are easier than others.

- Oh, hey, hey, hey, buddy.

Buddy, buddy, stop.

Can I just... (cow moos) (Sadie groans) You are so naughty.

- [Kurtis] If you think a five-year-old has no business pushing cattle, don't tell Sadie that.

- All right, we got to be calm, we got to go to that corner and get those calves and bring 'em up here, okay?

And we'll lock them up.

- Okay, give me, give me, give me.

- Will you... Yeah, she's getting almost too comfortable with the cows.

Sometimes she wants to take off and go get a cow by herself and we like to give her some independence, but also be right there in case something goes wrong to help her out.

- That one's tune off the wire.

- [Wade] Sadie.

- [Lindsey] Come here baby.

- You've got to be kidding me.

- [Lindsey] She was out here when she was about a month old.

It was the first time she probably saw a cow.

- [Kurtis] For Sadie's mom, Lindsey, seeing her daughter take to the farm life at such a young age is a little more than surprising.

- I was shocked to see that this was something that she was really interested in and she's actually very knowledgeable about it for a five year old.

She knows way more than I do.

- I pull your tags out with this one and I put pills and cows and meals with this.

I've seen people do this, but I've never done it before.

If a cow got bit by a raccoon or something, I really wanna put this on a tail and just scrub it.

- [Kurtis] It may seem Sadie is just helping out on the farm the way children like to do, but for her, it's an actual job.

No, seriously, Sadie owns some of these calves.

- This will be her fourth year to sell calves, you know, slowly we've built her up to five head.

- Sadie's calves are part of the Oklahoma Quality Beef Network, and she takes part in both buying and selling cattle.

What does she do with all that money?

The answer is the reason her parents had her put on the ranching hat at such a young age.

- We started Sadie a savings account when she was born and we realized we weren't making much interest off of that savings account, so we decided to invest in cows for her instead.

As she gets older, we hope to be able to use that for a college fund for her and to support whatever she wants her future to be.

- The Miller family is just a really tremendous family.

This is the next generation.

They grow 'em young, start 'em young, and I just think it's tremendous that we have someone at this age that is interested in in the OQBM program, preconditioning program and doing the right things in the cattle business.

- [Kurtis] Following close behind her dad, Sadie is learning lessons on the ranch Wade learned from his father, a Miller family tradition.

- [Wade] In some of our pastures, she's the fourth generation of our family to wean a calf off of that land, so that's pretty neat.

- [Kurtis] For Lindsey, the work ethic Sadie is developing and the lessons learned are invaluable.

But most importantly, she's grown so much as a person.

- She has always been very shy, and we've tried to do dance with her, and those things just made her really nervous and she wasn't interested.

But 4H, showing cattle, all of those things have made her really come out of her shell.

- [Kurtis] Sadie will continue to buy and sell cattle.

- [Sadie] Let's go.

- [Kurtis] Saving every bit she makes for her future.

Well, maybe not all.

- Well, sometimes when I lose a tooth, I don't save it.

- And who knows?

- And put gloves on because- - Maybe she'll continue with the Miller tradition and take over the reins of the cattle production, although she thinks she's ready now.

- I can open that door so I can close it.

Dad, can you go get a cow?

- Pittsburgh County.

I'm Kurtis Hare.

- I think we just can go... (upbeat music) - If you wanna check out the fall sale dates for OQBN, as well as find out more about the program, we have a link for you at sunup.okstate.edu.

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

This week's topic is reproductive efficiency in the cow herd, and we kind of come at this from different angles as we discuss it this week, and we follow up on some stuff from a few weeks ago when we addressed that weaning time is often the best day of the year to capture a lot of cow herd data and do some basic cowboy math and take a look at what kind of return we're getting from those cows that serve as the production factory in our cow-calf operation.

And so we take that data and we go a step further, thinking about certain things that it indicates to us this week relative to our topic.

Reproductive efficiency over time, good times and bad in the cattle business, is a very economically important trait.

Now, depending on when you market your calves and what the markets look like, we could argue that it is the most economically important trait in a beef cow-calf operation.

We know we've got the annual cost tied up in those cows.

That calf we're gonna sell from 'em every year is our return on that investment and our input of time and expense, and so right now we look at a time in this business when cow inventories nationally are low and we know prices are robust for all categories of cattle.

But if we still take a look at some basic things, like the percentage of our cows that are actually raising a calf to weaning each year, it's informative to us relative to some decisions we can make in the future regarding management, maybe bull selection and genetics.

We know that reproductive traits in general are pretty low in heritability, which means they're largely influenced by environment.

The last couple years in Oklahoma, we've had some pretty challenging environment and climate issues to work through, and those calves that we're weaning right now are really going back to that summer of 2022, when we were in a pretty significant drought.

But nevertheless, looking at those numbers, holding our cows accountable, thinking about the percentage of them that raised the calf to weaning, maybe even digging into that a little bit deeper and thinking about the percentage of our cows' mature weight that they are weaning off can help us make better management, maybe nutrition decisions at some point down the road.

From a genetic standpoint, the next time we're buying bulls, there is a whole number of different genetic predictors that are available to us in most beef breeds, things like heifer pregnancy, mature cow size, some bioeconomic indices for dollar weaning, dollar maternal, as well as milk EPDs, calving ease maternal, all things that we can take into consideration that if we put the right selection pressure on a lot of those genetic values, it helps us over time develop a cow herd that fits our environment and literally results in weaning off more pounds of calves relative to the pounds of cows that we are maintaining.

- On an annual basis.

And so weaning time's a good time to get data.

Reproductive efficiency is a critically important trait in the cow-calf sector, and doing some of that math and looking at some of those equations that are in chapter four of the most recent edition of the beef manual are informative to us to help us do a better job of managing cows for optimum reproductive efficiency, as well as selecting for bulls that are gonna sire daughters that end up being more productive and accomplish a lot of these goals that lead to increased profit potential.

And at a time when we know we're low on cow inventory and we're trying to hang on to the cows we have to capitalize on this robust market, it's important that we still keep an eye on the future and think about what we can do better to increase that profit potential in our cow-calf operation.

Reproductive efficiency, always important to consider.

Thanks for joining us this week on Cow-Calf Corner.

(light country music) - Summer crops are being harvested right now, so we got our grain marketing specialist, Dr. Kim Anderson, to walk us through the prices.

So Kim, what's happening with prices?

- Well, if you look at wheat prices, $6.25 up in the Pond Creek area.

Oh, add a dime to it if you go out in the panhandle.

Take about 20, 25 cents off of it down in southern Oklahoma.

Corn can be sold or forward contracted for $4.75.

You know, those corn prices have just been flat lately.

Soybeans, remember we talked a couple weeks ago about will soybean prices go below 12?

Well, they're hitting that $12 level right now.

They're down around 12, 12.05, something like that.

And of course, the cotton futures is just above 87, which gives you a price in Oklahoma around 84 cents.

- So what's the 2023 Oklahoma wheat harvest story?

- Well, if you look at the wheat harvest, it's around 69 million bushels, almost the same as it was last year.

And if you look at prices, they've been as high as $8.50.

We got that in late July.

And they finished, the harvest months, June, July, into August, down right at $6.

Now, the average June, July, and August price was $7.45.

So that gave you a $2.50 range from six to 8.50.

Now, if you look at September to October, we've averaged about $6.62 in the Pond Creek area for September.

Prices now are down, almost hit that $6, and they're up to around 6.25 right now.

- So how low can prices go?

- Well, now that's a story and that's a question that farmers are asking right now.

'Cause we've, you know, we've went from 8.50 in late July to 6.04 in October 1.

$2.50 range right there.

So you've got a lotta volatility in this market.

Now, if you'll go back to 2000, the harvest of 2009 and work through today, then, prices have averaged in Pond Creek, a little higher in the panhandle, a little lower in southern Oklahoma, $5.84.

The maximum price was $13.13.

We got that in May of '22.

And the minimum price, the lowest price was 2.55.

We got that in July of '16, and that's not that long ago.

So that gives you a range.

We could see prices down below $3.

We could see 'em above 13.

Neither one of those is very likely, but it is a possibility.

Now, let's look at the '24 harvest prices and what we could see there.

Right now, you can forward contract 6.25.

If you look from harvest to harvest, from year to year, the average change is $1.26.

The average price in Pond Creek has been 7.45.

So that gives you a range of 6.20 to 8.70 for next year.

We're at 6.25 right now.

So we're already at the bottom of that.

Now, if you look at over from '09, June '09 through the '23 harvest, the range has been from 4.95 to 9.55.

And average change or the largest change from harvest to harvest was 2.50.

And that's the harvest time periods.

So if you're looking of what prices could do, so you take your 7.45, take 2.50 off of it, you got about $5.

And if you add 2.50 to it, you got almost 10.

I think that's the maximum range.

My best guess would be 5.50 to 8.50.

- So how should producers be selling their commodities then?

- I think they just wait 'til, you know, dollar-cost averaging, wait and see what prices are like in the spring.

I really like to sell in the June through August time period and that's what history says that in Oklahoma, most producers will get the highest average price if they'll just sell that June through August period.

- All righty, thanks Kim.

Kim Anderson, grain marketing specialist here at Oklahoma State University.

(light country music) And just a quick reminder about the upcoming 2023 Cowboy Stampede.

The rodeo will be October 19th through October 21st starting at 7:00 p.m. and ending every night at 10:00.

The OSU Rodeo Team will compete in nine events each night, and tickets are $10.

But children under the age of five get in free.

For more information about this event, just go to sunup.okstate.edu.

- As we celebrate National 4-H Week, we're looking back at a recent story where young people learned just what it takes to become a veterinarian.

Here's "SUNUP's" Seth Fish.

(light country music continues) - [Seth] Bones, organs, and the smell of formaldehyde, an environment that would leave most people squeamish.

But these Oklahoma 4-Hers are excited for the opportunity.

- And I just feel super excited.

Like, I've done a few dissections before, but today I've gotten to get into, like, the nitty gritty, like, the lungs and the heart.

It's really giving me a feel for, like, especially if I was interested in surgery and veterinary medicine and kind of figuring out if that's something that I want to do.

- [Seth] The Vet Science Short Course Camp is a two-day event for high school 4-Hers across the state who have an interest in veterinary medicine.

- [Instructor] But we've got our show pig over here.

- So everything that we are doing today and tomorrow is pretty much all hands-on.

And then we're doing different labs today that include dissection, anatomy, disease outbreaks, small animal examinations.

- How would you describe that?

- They're learning about the profession, but they're also learning about things that they can take home and they can use on their farms and ranches if that's the background that they come from.

But we also know that kids learn a lot better when they're doing those hands-on things.

And so they're retaining that information a lot better being hands-on than just sitting in a classroom being talked to.

- [Seth] The College of Veterinary Medicine, Animal Sciences, and a number of 4-H educators developed the program in part to address the nationwide shortages in vet medicine and falling enrollment numbers in vet school programs.

- The American Veterinary Medical Association in April of 2021 came out with some data that said, you know, before the pandemic there were around three and a half jobs for every veterinarian looking.

After the pandemic of spring of last year, there's 12 and a half plus jobs for every veterinarian looking.

And so we want to increase the pipeline, particularly of Oklahoma students that are residents here who are applying for veterinary school.

And so we're trying to get them interested in the profession early.

We're trying to give them some things to think about.

They know what veterinary medicine in general is about.

They know what they're getting into, what's exciting about the profession, and also some of the challenges.

And this is a great way to kind of open the door for high school students to take a look.

- [Seth] Both the organizers and the students, say 4-H events like the Vet Science Camp are invaluable to the youth of our state, providing resources and exposure to industries that these 4-Hers will undoubtedly have an impact on in the future.

- I think it's important that we show our 4-H kids different career paths because we want them to go out into the world and be good citizens.

You know, there's lots of different career paths.

And it's our job as educators to teach those kids different careers that are out there for them.

- I think it really just reminds me, like, how involved 4-H is and how many opportunities they have.

4-H has projects in whatever you want to do, especially, obviously, veterinary medicine.

And so hearing about this camp made me excited, and I'm just really grateful to have a program like 4-H to give me these opportunities.

- I'm a product of the 4-H program.

I was a 4-Her in Lincoln and Grady County growing up.

And it really laid the foundation for me to open the doors to what the profession was about, gave me those leadership skills, gave me those communication skills that are absolutely important in any profession, but certainly within veterinary medicine.

And so 4-H is a great opportunity to discover the world around you and to take a look at what you may wanna be when you grow up.

- [Seth] In Payne County, I'm Seth Fish.

(gentle music) - To find a 4-H program in your area, just go to sunup.okstate.edu.

And that'll do it for our show this week.

Remember, you can find us anytime on that 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.

(gentle music continues)