- Good morning everyone.

We got a great show for you lined up today.

It's that time to start thinking about planting wheat and our OSU extension small grain specialist Amanda Silva has some tips.

Then we're shifting to pecans and getting an update on how things are going in the season.

Then our OSU extension beef cattle specialist, Dr.

Paul Beck, has some tips when it comes to fall weaning, plus a special livestock marketing report all the way from Canada.

We have all that and more.

So grab your cup of coffee 'cause Sunup starts right now And welcome back to Sun Up everybody.

I'm Kurtis Hair and I'm joined now with our OSU extension small grain specialist, Dr.

Amanda Silva.

And Amanda, as a lot of the state knows, we got some rain and some much needed, you know, cooler temperatures and a lot of producers, especially just the graze out producers for wheat, they're probably already starting to get it or either itching to get out in the field if they haven't already.

So what are some advice that you have for producers?

You know, it's kind of hard to believe, we're already talking about planting wheat, but it's that time of year.

- Yeah, yeah.

Everything went by really fast.

Yes, we do have some people going after forage planting a little on the early side of September.

As far as advice for our dual purpose producers, what we have seen is the mid September window is the optimal time where they can maximize forage but also not penalize yield.

So we still get that good yield potential for wheat in dual purpose and for our grain only producers still kind of early for them.

So usually we, we aim three, four weeks after the optimal window from mid-September, so putting them sometime mid-October.

And even our research, we, we've, we are seeing that even delaying more than that, that mid-October.

- Yeah, - Depending on the weather conditions, it's still good for grain only producers - And for those grays out producers, are there any things considered, you know, with getting the weed in this early and it's being cool with being cool and it's about to warm up again, which we'll touch on that here in a little bit, but for like insects, is there any insect questions?

'cause I do know fall armyworms were issues in the, in the summer.

- Yes.

Yes.

So for our graze out dual purpose producers that go in a little bit early in the fall, so they do have to watch for fall armyworms, so as soon as they plant, start getting that seedling up.

So make sure to scout for that.

Another thing is making sure they control volunteer wheat or grassy hosts as much as possible to decrease the chances that they will get the wheat streak mosaic viruses, those that are trans, those viruses that are transmitted by the wheat mite.

We had some issues with wheat streak mosaic virus last season, so a good way to, to control for that is trying to manage, trying to reduce that population of volunteer wheat and grassy hole.

- So as you mentioned, it's about to get warm, so some of those dual purpose producers, a lot of 'em, they're, they're not gonna be getting out in the fields, but it's really not a big deal to wait, but why is that?

- Yeah, so what we've seen in our research is that mid September window, it's too good for them.

It's actually better for them than planting too early in September if they're going for forage and grain because that mid September window, even a little bit later in September, they can still get forage and not penalize yield as much for planting too early.

So basically if they, if they plant too early in September, they can get a lot of forage, but you get some reduction in yield.

But as they move into that mid-September window a little later in September, they're still fine.

They can get forage and also maximize their yield potential, - But focusing just on grain only, it's, it, it with as high as cattle prices are right now, it's probably really important as the wheat starts to come up to be scouting.

- Yes.

So it starts now as soon as we get the, the seed in the ground, we need to start scouting.

So again, for those four armyworms, for mites, aphids, so all those passes that can cure in the fall.

So it's a good practice to start walking the fields and, and keep a look at it.

- All righty.

Thanks Amanda.

Dr.

Amanda Silva, OSU extension small grain specialist here at Oklahoma State University.

Well, the pecans are starting to drop, so how's the crop looking this year set up?

Elizabeth Hoke caught up with our OSU extension fruit and nut specialist Dr.

Becky Carroll to find out more.

- We're here now with Becky Carroll, our OSU extension fruit and nut specialist.

And Becky, we're starting to think about pecans now.

We're kind of in the middle of the season.

What are producers thinking about?

- Yeah, this year has been a little bit different season, but right now growers are monitoring their traps for pecan weevil and although we kind of had an early emergence with all the rains in July, we've, we had a lot of them come out of the ground early and at that time of the year, those pecans are in the water stage.

So if they're probing those nuts, they fall to the ground.

But once the pecan transitions into the, to the dough stage when it's actually forming the kernel, which is, depends on what varieties, but our early maturing, like Cana Ponty, that starts about the middle of August.

So once those weevil probe into those nuts, they can lay their eggs at that.

And we've got some nuts that are late maturing here on the station like Cato and Oconee that are still in the water stage.

So, you know, the, the egg laying hasn't occurred on those, but we're trying to keep any kind type of egg laying from those weevil from occurring because that just keeps that cycle going.

So the eggs are laid in the nuts, the, they, they hatch and those larvae feet on the kernel, they chew a perfectly circular hole in the shuck in the shell and they squeeze out, go to the ground, stay for two to three years and then start that process all over again.

So that's probably one of our biggest things that growers are, are thinking about right now.

- Yeah.

You mentioned nuts falling on the ground.

Has that been more of an issue this year?

- This year we have had a lot of questions about nut drop and that could be that we, because we have a very large crop across the state, so sometimes pecan trees will just drop some of that crop because the crop is too heavy and so it's not always a bad thing.

If we have fewer pecans on the tree, the quality's gonna be improved as well.

But that drop can be from poor pollination.

We had a lot of rain during pollination time in May.

It could be from insect feeding too much water, not enough water too cloudy days.

There's so many reasons that a pecan tree will d drop pecans on the ground.

- Yeah.

So where are we kind of at in the cycle of things?

Are we kind of on time?

- Yeah, we're pretty much on schedule from, from what I'm seeing around here at the station and other locations, the the nuts, the early ripening they are filling out so that kernel is almost completely filling that shell and we wanna have no air pockets in that kernel.

We wanna be completely filled with with good pecan meat.

And so that's the stage when we really need to be pushing the irrigation.

If we're not getting rainfalls about two inches a week is what we'd like to have during that nut fill time period.

And then once they get completely filled no air pockets we can back off on that irrigation schedule a little bit.

But we don't wanna forget about irrigation when it comes to shuck split time too because without water those shucks won't open at the right time.

So we need to have good moisture to open up the shucks like they should as well.

- Yeah, so some rainfall coming up would be good for for us.

- Yep.

- Yeah.

So what about disease?

Have we been seeing a lot of disease pressure?

Oh yeah, - We've had so much rain early season this year that we've got pecan scab and anthracnose and all different types of diseases here at the orchard and at the research station we have lots of air flow where upland and so we usually don't see a lot of disease pressure, but we've had just lots of ideal conditions for disease and even with maybe six fungicide applications on some of our trees, we're still seeing some of that pecan scab on these.

If it's not too bad, it may affect, it may not affect the nut quality that much, but when you get start getting a little more coverage on that shuck, the nut size will be affected and if it's too much, those nuts may drop to the ground or they just won't open when it's time to have shuck split.

- Yeah, and you do have a field day coming up to talk about all of this stuff?

- Yeah, we have a field day, September 25th, it's in the morning, we have sign in about nine, the program starts at nine 30, we'll finish about noon with a meal from Ag credit and we'll touch on all different types of management things that peon growers need to be thinking about from tree spacing, nutrition, how to take soil and leaf samples, all different types of things.

- Alright, thank you Becky.

And for a link to that field day, just go to our website, sunup.OKstate.edu.

- We just wanna remind you about two exciting field days coming up in a few weeks.

First up is the peanut and cotton field day.

This event will be 5:00 PM to 8:00 PM on September 18th at the Caddo Research station in Fort Cobb.

Topics will include weed management, harvest aids for cotton, peanut varieties, and much more.

Then the cotton field day on September 25th at the Southwest Research Station in Altus.

Topics will include cotton variety, trials, wheat control, irrigation, and much, much more.

If you'd like more information about these field days, just scan this QR code.

- Hello Oklahoma, this is Emma White, your Mesonet agricultural outreach specialist here with your weekly Mesonet weather report.

Well, you can tell where it's rained and where it hasn't.

This map shows the 32 inch plant available water in the soil for the state.

We'd like these numbers to be around 50% or ideally higher.

Thus most of the state is staying above that number.

But southwest Oklahoma and the western side of the panhandle are not.

In fact in Tipton, the plant available water in the soil is below the 10 year average right now and has been so for about the past month.

Below average is indicated by the red line going negative or below that darker black line.

Below average makes sense though because while the rest of the state has received abundant rainfall, southwest Oklahoma has not received as much.

This map compares August precipitation in 2025 to the 10 year average and shows below average precipitation for most of southwest Oklahoma this past August.

One unique experience much of the state went through the last several weeks was the lower temperatures.

Temperature is related to crop development, so lower temperatures can mean slower development.

As this graph shows for statewide soybean progress until September 7th, this year's development is lagging behind both 2020 and the five year average.

Hopefully the warmer temperatures this week can help with that soybean and corn back on track.

Since the cotton is mostly in southwest Oklahoma and the temperatures haven't been as cool down there.

Cotton development seems to be fairly on track as compared to last year and the five-year average.

Wheat planting is on the verge of starting in Oklahoma.

So stay tuned in the coming weeks for sunup episodes.

Covering that topic, Gary McManus is up next with your state climatology report.

- Thanks Em and good morning everyone.

Well, lot's happened since we last spoke.

Fall went away and summer actually came back.

We had severe weather return up in northwest Oklahoma and we had some changes on the drought monitor map.

Let's get right to it.

Well the biggest change we see is down in southwest Oklahoma that that region in the state and we saw a large increase in the abnormally dry conditions and also at moderate drought.

So the abnormal dry conditions are the places in danger of going into drought.

That's the yellow color.

And then the light tan indicates that small region, moderate drought and mostly Tillman County, but that does threaten to start to spread if we don't get rainfall.

You can also see the small areas of drought up in central, northeastern north, central Oklahoma, and also some more abnormally dry conditions over in east central Oklahoma.

Now the big reason for that increase in southwest Oklahoma pretty obviously it just hasn't rained in a while.

It hasn't rained enough.

So this map from the Mesonet, the consecutive consecutive days with less than a quarter inch of rainfall.

We are up past a month in some cases, but generally 20 to 40 days going strong without rainfall and across the rest of the state.

And we are getting up to close to two weeks.

So we are in a mini dry spell, but a bit of a longer dry spell in southwest Oklahoma.

We can also see the reason for that increase in the drought monitor in the southwestern part of the state on the 60 day rainfall map from the Mesonet.

Pretty easy to tell where the best rains fell, those areas of reds and oranges as we get up above seven, eight inches up to 14 inches in some cases.

And we can also see those areas of deficits down in southwestern, northeastern north, central Oklahoma, and central and east central Oklahoma.

So just look at the greens, those are the regions where we see those areas remaining on the US drought monitor map.

That's it for this time.

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

- Welcome to Livestock Marketing.

We're doing things a little bit differently because our very own Darrel Peele is off up north in Canada.

So Darrel, kind of quickly talk a little bit about like what you're doing in Canada.

- Yeah, so I'm in in LeBus Quebec, Canada, which is right across the St.

Lawrence River from Quebec City.

And so we, we've spent the last several days making our way here, seeing some things across the country.

- So this definitely isn't kind of like more vacation.

This is work.

So what are you looking at?

- Well, it's a little bit of both.

You know, we, we are seeing some things, I'm, I'm taking some annual leave.

We visited Niagara Falls on the way up here the other day, but the timing of this trip was because of this is when the Canadian Cattlemen's Association are having their semi-annual meeting.

And so I'm here to do, to be here.

I've been serving as a mentor for the last year for one of the members of their young leadership program and so they're graduating and I wanted to be here for, for that.

So get a chance to visit that for a couple of days as a part of this trip.

- Well that's great.

So kind of talk us a little bit about the Canadian cattle industry.

How are, how is the cattle industry up there?

Prices is obviously high worldwide, but how, how's cattle industry in Canada?

- Yeah, you bet.

You know, Canada for the most part has struggled much like the US the last few years with a lot of drought and their cattle numbers had been declining again, much like the US but just recently the Canadian Statistical Agency issued new reports for July one that showed for the first time since I think 2021, their cattle herd grew a little bit this last year in, in Canada, Canada has about 11.9 million head of cattle total in their industry and that was up about eight tenths of a percent.

The beef cow herd was up about four tenths of a percent and their beef replacement heifers were up 2% on a year over year basis.

So it looks like they've started some retention and some herd rebuilding that we have not seen yet in the US.

- So in regards to kind of like looking at the trade picture and just, you know, in worldwide production, what is the relationship between our, these two countries where, where our country and Canada?

- Yeah, we have a very integrated relationship with Canada as far as cattle and beef, both Canada, we do a lot of bilateral trade of beef with Canada.

So we both import Canada is is the number three source of beef imports into the US so far this year.

Those imports are down about 3.5%.

Our, our imports from most countries are up and you know, our total imports through July, were up about 30% on a year over year basis, but with Canada they were down slightly 3.5% lower on a year over year basis.

As far as exports, our exports to Canada are down 12.7% so far this year.

Canada's the number five export market for, for the US and, and people might ask, you know, why we both import and export from Canada because in fact the quality of the products in general are pretty similar and a lot of it just has to do with the fact that, you know, the US and Canada share a very wide east west border.

And so when you look at where cattle production and beef production happens in Canada, it's closer to the western part of the US.

If you look at where most of the people in Canada are, they're close to the eastern, you know, the corn belt and so on the US So a lot of products flow north and south.

It's much more transportation efficient than than shipping them east and west in both countries.

And so it's really transportation logistics that, that drive a lot of the trade between the US and Canada as far as beef.

So we, we do have that live cattle trade relationship as well.

- Well Darryl, we hope you have a great trip up in Canada and we look forward to seeing you back here in a couple weeks and we will dive right back into, you know, cattle, the cattle industry in our country.

- Yep, absolutely.

We continue moving on.

- All right, thanks Darryl.

- You bet.

- Good morning Oklahoma.

Welcome to Cow-calf corner.

Our topic this week is the 7% rule of body condition scoring cows.

We know body condition scoring is a really effective management tool and it is that time of year as we think about weaning calves, cows are slicked off and honestly if they've done a good job of raising a calf, they should be at about their thinnest condition point that they are in the annual cycle of production.

So it's a good time to assess body condition scores and think about a target if we need a little additional feed or supplementation going into calving next spring, or if our cows are right where they need to be.

Why is this important?

We know that a cow is more likely to breed back quickly if she calves at a body condition score five and a half to six.

Now for a bred heifer we say we need to keep that threshold at about six because that's gonna give them the body energy reserves that they need once they've calved, went through the stress of calving potentially with winter and spring calving where we may have some inclement weather, those body fat reserves are gonna be important to 'em to ensure that we get a quick breed back and keep 'em in that window so that they're actually breeding back and weaning a calf every 365 days.

Why is this time of year important and the 7% rule, where does that come into play?

Well, if we assess body conditions score on our cows right now and we're weighing cows getting a feel at the time of weaning of what our actual mature cow size is, we can take the current weight of the cow.

If we want to keep or put a body condition score on her, we need to add about 7% of what she currently weighs.

Take for example, if our four to 7-year-old cows are weighing about 1200 pounds right now, we assess body condition score and we call 'em about a five on average.

We'd like to bring those back to a five and a half or six 7% of 1200 pounds means that those cows will be at a body condition score six at about 1284.

If we only wanna put a half a body condition score on 'em, we need to get 'em up to about 1240 to 1250.

So effective management tool, body condition scoring, having those cows where they need to be at that point that they start to calve so that we get good breed back.

It really starts now.

Assess body condition scores as you equate that to a weight, take about 7% of where they are.

That's gonna take you one body condition score or another in either direction.

As always, thanks for joining us on Cow Calf Corner.

- Finally today, OSU extension beef cattle specialist Dr.

Paul Beck has some tips to make your fall weaning program successful this season.

- Well, good morning.

Today we're gonna talk about weaning and getting prepared for weaning.

We've had some beautiful weather this fall so far and I've talked to a lot of producers that are already starting to to wean their calves and I just felt it was is time to bring up some points that we need to consider and getting prepared for weaning.

We need to be sure we have all, all of our vaccines, dewormers pharmaceuticals ready to go and, and and in place.

There's nothing that really slows down the process more than having to, you know, go to town and, and get more pharmaceuticals.

But before that, we really need to work on getting our calves ready to wean.

If we have a set of facilities that we normally wean in, you know, it's best to get the calves familiar with those facilities before we wean.

We can bring them in and feed the cows with the calves in there for a few days leading up to weaning and just make them used to coming in so that it's not a big struggle to get those calves caught.

And they're then they know where they're at, try to keep everything the same, make it just a normal day until you get that gate caught gate shut and the cattle caught.

You know, if we are practicing good cattle handling practices, we're quiet, we're slow, and the cattle are calm and we are calm, whenever we start getting excited, the cattle start getting excited and that's when we start losing a lot of body weight through that weaning process.

We need to have clean water cattle dry matter intake is related to water intake.

So if we have limited water intake, they will limit their their feed intake.

We need to have highly palable, palatable, dust-free fresh hay available for these calves.

So it's something that they're, they're familiar with while they're weaning, they've been exposed to it while they're with the cow or it's similar to the grass that they've been consuming.

A, a high quality receiving feed that's formulated and supplemented to include all the minerals and vitamins that they would need during the weaning process is also important.

It's gotta be dust free, it's gotta be palatable so those calves will eat it and will have all the nutrients they need through the weaning process.

We're pushing the immune system through vaccination along at a time when they're stressed from separation from the cow.

So we need to have extra protein and extra energy in these rations so that they will have the immune system to respond to the vaccines we're giving.

Another thing to consider would be using some lower stress weaning techniques like fence line weaning where we have a well fenced grass trap.

We can bring the, the cows and the calves into it for a day or so before weaning.

Separate the cows and calves, leave the cows in that trap and then bring the cows out into a pasture next to them.

The fences have to be good.

A, a good hot wire along with a solid barbed wire fence actually is sufficient for this.

That allows the cows and calves to have fence line contact, nose to nose contact.

It decreases the amount of bawling and and walking fences that the calves will do very low stress on that calf to do it that way.

About a week, nose to nose contact and then you can move that calf to another facility.

Weaning is a stressful time and the more we can do to reduce the stress and to get these calfs prepared for weaning and being prepared ourselves will make this process go a lot better and decrease the amount of stress bovine respiratory disease and strength that these calves have during weaning.

- And that about wraps it up for us today.

Now remember, if you saw something on the show that you liked, you can always visit our website, sunup.OKstate.edu or stream us anytime on YouTube.

I'm Kurtis Hair and remember, Oklahoma Agriculture starts at Sunup.