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

I'm Lyndall Stout.

We join you today from the Cimarron Valley Ag Research Station at Perkins.

Even though it's winter, Oklahoma pecan producers are already thinking about the next growing season.

We'll have more on pecans in just a moment, but first, we're talking about nitrogen application in wheat with Dr. Brian Arnall.

(bright playful music) - When we look at this season, we have some stuff that happened that's not normally for a normal season.

So, a lot of the folks who went in we were so dry through September and early October when we're normally planting, fertilizing.

With the high prices of fertilizer, with the dry soils, we really pulled back on the pre-plant nitrogen that usually goes out on our grain-only wheat, even pulled back on some of our nitrogen on our graze-out and graze-in grain wheat.

So now, we're coming out, we've warmed up a little bit.

We do have that moisture that came through October, November, and early into December.

So we have some soil moisture.

So the decision's trying to be made.

Now, how much do we fertilize?

When do we fertilize and what's the optimum rate?

- So how are you answering that for producers?

- So there's a couple scenarios that we can work off with and I try to give options so they can make the decision.

One is if it's a grain-only, much like I've said many years in the past, is that we don't have to get in a rush with grain-only wheat.

We can wait a little bit further 'cause my concern right now is that yes, the wheat's starting to grow.

We're getting these warm afternoons and we're seeing good growth, but if you look at the Mesonet, a zero-to-16-inch soil moisture is okay.

We have two to four inches depending on where you're at, but if you zoom down to that next depth, that deeper depth, numbers don't change much.

So that means we're living on shallow soil moisture.

So as we're growing, we're starting to burn through that soil moisture, so as that soil moisture starts getting used, our yield potential has the chance to go down if we don't get more rain.

So we're caught in this basket of how much do we fertilize for and when do we fertilize?

I like to wait.

I like to hold that decision until we learn a little bit more about the season.

Are we going to get the rains in February?

Are we going to have some March rain?

So if we look at the wheat like we're out on today, this wheat has enough nutrients, it's not grown a lot.

It can manage, in fact, it's good if it stresses a little bit and we can wait to fertilize until February or March, but right now is not a bad time.

Producers that wanna go out today, early, early January, late January, I recommend that, that's okay.

I would pull back the rate.

Let's put on 30 or 40 pounds of nitrogen now and let's see how the rest of the season goes.

I'm really suggesting to include a zero check on those folks going out right now, zero and a high, and I'm willing to make shape files for folks.

So if you send me your field boundaries, I'll send you a file so that the sprayer or spreader will go through your field, in about half an acre, make a zero block, and a half an acre, make a big N-Rich block, and so you can see those for the rest of the season.

- For those who wanna go ahead and fertilize now, when they see the zero, what do they need to do?

- So that zero check is a really great opportunity for us to see what the environment is providing.

If you see it, you know, so if you fertilize now, in a week or two, you see that zero N check show up, you know that that wheat field is really dependent upon you to fertilize it to maximum potential.

However, as you're going through from January to February and into early March, and you can't find that zero check, that means your residual is high in the crops are surviving.

See, last year with the drought, we had a lot of nitrogen moving up in the soil profile.

We had really poor summer crops that left their fertility in the soil profile.

So we have a lot of unknowns going in the season in these reference strips.

High and low can be a big win.

If you're not going to go out with fertilizer right now, which I don't think you need to, I would still recommend putting out N-Rich strips to have an idea of what that environment's going to tell you.

- And it could affect your bottom line, of course, and let's also talk about prices now.

- Yeah.

- When we talked, you know, a few months ago, and of course, this time last year, it was all over the place.

- Yep.

- It's better now?

- Yeah, it's absolutely better.

The international markets seem to be improving.

The European fertilizer manufacturers are starting to ramp up.

So we're seeing signs that that price is gonna fall.

We've already seen prices drop.

They're not where we want 'em at as any producer that's having to pay that check, but they're definitely coming down.

So the expectation is that we see the trend for fertilizer prices start coming down as that European market and that European manufacturer really starts ramping up and starts producing 'cause all those plants are about to come on board.

- Well, let's hope so.

- Let's hope so.

- Okay, enough already.

Well, Brian, good to see you.

Thanks a lot for your great information.

- Good to see you, too.

(upbeat music) - Welcome to the Mesonet Weather Report, I'm Wes Lee.

As we move into the new year, it is.

- Still apparent that the La Niña weather pattern has a firm grip on us.

During La Niña events, we typically see warmer than normal and drier than normal conditions in the Southern Plains.

You can see on this graph, the La Niña periods by the blue lines pointing downward.

We are continuing into our third winter in a row, or a triple dip La Niña pattern.

And true to form, you can see on this map, from midweek, just how little rainfall we have had since the first of the year.

On a statewide basis, the blue line shown here would be the normal rainfall during this period, while the red, almost flat line shows what little has actually fell for the year as of Tuesday.

Temperatures have been even more inflated recently as illustrated by this map of highs on Tuesday.

There were a few record-breaking temps in the far Southern counties.

The high temperature line chart shows in red that every single day since the first of the year was above normal.

Some days, by as much as 25 degrees.

Short term, expect the heat to continue.

Longer term, La Niña is still projected to return to a normal pattern by early spring.

Now, here's Gary with the latest drought maps.

- Thanks Wes, and good morning everyone.

Well, those good rains we've had over parts of the state over the last 60 to 90 days really are starting to wash out in this current dry spell.

We can take a look back at the current water year which started on October 1st, 2022, and see where we stand going back those few months.

Well, we have lots of really good colors on this mezzanine map.

Again, that's about 102 days going back to October 1st, 2022.

This is the beginning of the water year as I said.

We can see some of those values down across the parts of southeast Oklahoma from 12 to 14 inches, a little bit higher in some cases.

And then as we go Northwest, it of course starts to diminish quite rapidly.

It goes from six to seven inches across the I-44 corridor, down to four to five inches as we get up into the northwestern parts of the state.

And finally, less than two inches to less than an inch as we get into far northwestern Oklahoma and the western Panhandle.

So some really good colors on there, but how does that stack up to normal?

Let's take a look at that departure from normal map for that same timeframe.

Well, the greens are the good colors, and the light green are not so bad colors.

Much of the southern part of the state has at least a little bit of a surplus, but at most, we're talking about an inch or two.

In some cases, we get a little bit higher from three to four.

Then over in far eastern Oklahoma, in the Sallisaw area, they have 5.2 inch surplus.

But for the most part, we are below normal in the rainfall over that timeframe.

But this time of year, we can expect different amounts in different parts of the state.

So let's take a look at the percent of normal values down across southwest Oklahoma.

Those surpluses amounted to close to 150% of normal in some cases now across the southeast and up in east of central Oklahoma, just a little bit there on the surplus side.

Much of the rest state below normal, less than a hundred percent of normal.

But then again, when you get up into the far northwestern parts of the state, they're less than 50% of normal and out in the Panhandle, in a lot of cases, they're less than 25% of normal.

So really drastically dry conditions across that northern part of the state, especially up in northwestern Oklahoma.

What does that mean for the newest drought monitor map this week?

Well, not much, about the same picture.

We are in the cool season so we're not seeing rapid changes, but we definitely didn't see any improvements this week either.

Unfortunately, we're still in the driest part of the year, so a couple of months to spring.

So hopefully, we can get some rainfall in here before then.

That's it for this time.

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

(bright country music) - We're talking pecans now with Becky Carroll, our fruit and pecan specialist for extension and Becky, 2022 season for pecans, pretty disappointing in Oklahoma.

- Right, it was a year we'll probably just let pass and hope for a better year in 2023.

- What were some of the challenges and give us an overview of how things went throughout the growing time.

- It was just a rough year.

We started out with too few chilling hours last winter and then we ended up having a drought and everyone experienced that with growing any kind of crops.

But the drought really affected the pecan size and a lot of trees just dropped the pecans that they had.

And then, those that survived the drought, we ended up with a really early fall freeze and a lot of our growers had the shuck stuck on the pecans.

And so what started out to look like a pretty good season, turned out to be a really bad season.

- And so for the growers who were able to harvest some pecans, the market was also disappointing.

Talk about that.

- A lot of, a lot of people, well, our native growers, a lot of them just didn't get their harvest.

- Out because of the lack of the crop.

But then a lot of our other people who did have a crop, once they harvested them, they just didn't have much of a market to sell those crops.

And many of them decided to put them in cold storage because the prices that they could receive were pretty low.

So they're hoping that those prices will increase this spring and be able to sell those a little bit easier.

- Well, as we talk about a lot, Oklahoma producers in all areas of crop production are resilient, of course.

- That's true.

- So let's just go ahead (Becky laughing) and put that behind us - Right.

- And look forward to the next season.

So, with that in mind, what can producers do?

What can growers do to manage their trees?

- Right, this time of the year, they need to be kinda taking a look at their groves and their orchards.

And probably the most limiting factor on pecan production in the state is overcrowding of the orchard or the grove.

And so, this is a perfect time for them to get out and do some tree thinning.

And so, that sounds pretty drastic, but pecan trees really need a lotta sunlight.

And so, we start out with a known amount that we want on an acreage, just like cattle.

You can't over graze an area and expect your cattle to do well.

So we wanna have the right amount of trees on our acres.

And so, they can do that by looking at the canopies.

So we don't want canopies touching.

And this is better to kind of assess your thinning during the summer when they have leaves and shoots and everything.

But we don't want any canopies touching.

We want about 10 to 15 feet between those canopies.

And then, in the summer, when the sun is straight up noon time, we wanna look at the orchard floor.

And we wanna have about 50% of that orchard floor, grove floor to have sunlight.

And that helps the trees, but it also helps our forage for those native growers that may be grazing cattle under their orchards.

If you have too many trees, that it's just like they're all trying to get the same moisture.

So less trees with a drought is better.

- So, let's hope it ends, but, - Yes, right.

- Just in case it doesn't, some of these management practices - Yeah.

- Can help set people up for success.

- Right.

- Speaking of that, you and the team are putting together a workshop this February.

- Right.

- Talk about that.

- Right, we have a pecan pest management workshop.

And we're working with Gordon Cooper Technology Center in Shawnee.

And they've been really great to work with on providing a space and really helpful in doing this class, this workshop.

But it's a free workshop for anyone that's interested in learning about pecan management.

We'll talk about pest management mainly, looking at ways to help prevent insect and disease problems and we'll even touch on weeds as well.

- The cost is free, you mentioned.

What's the best way to register or sign up for the workshop?

- [Becky] They can go online to the Pecan Management web page, and there's a link there to register.

- [Host] Okay, great information, Becky, thanks a lot.

- Thank you.

- And for a link to the workshop registration, just go to sunup.okstate.edu.

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

This week, we continue on our theme in January 2023 on calving season and being prepared for calving season and some of the things we encounter in calving season.

And our topic this week is colostrum.

Colostrum is a really critical thing for a baby calf to get an adequate dose of very early on in life.

And we're talking literally within the first few hours after that calf is born.

He needs to get up and nurse his mother or she and get an adequate dose of colostrum.

And in all mammals, colostrum is critical for establishing or giving them passive immunity.

And baby calves that don't get an adequate amount of colostrum within that first few hours will tend to have a lot more health problems all the way through life or potentially not even survive beyond the first few days.

Now, how does this work?

Basically, a newborn calf has a naive immune system.

Meaning, they've not been exposed to anything to build up any immunity to potential disease.

And so, colostrum is full of a lotta good things that stimulate passive immunity in this baby calf, primarily immunoglobulins.

And how does this process work?

Well, over time, we talk about this wonderful digestive system that beef cattle have and all the complexities of the rumen and these four compartments up at the beginning of that digestive system.

But when a baby calf is born, we have something called an esophageal groove, which, as they begin to nurse- - Kind of creates a bypass system so that that initial milk and colostrum ingested passes through and go straight to the small intestine.

Within the first few hours of life, that small intestine is very porous.

The gut wall's very porous.

It permeates all those things that stimulate passive immunity to get straight into the bloodstream of the calf and create that immune system.

Within the first six hours of a calf being born, they're gonna start to lose a pretty healthy percentage of that ability to rapidly absorb the things outta colostrum they need.

Within the first 12 hours, they start to lose quite a bit of that potential.

So, the reality is we need to make sure that a calf gets an adequate dose of colostrum within the first 6 to 12 hours of life.

If we're in question about just how vigorous that baby calf is, we should always be prepared to administer or give them colostrum.

Last week on "Cow Calf Corner" we talked about some of that equipment you wanna have on hand going into calving season.

Among those things is a feeding tube so you could actually get that colostrum into the calf.

But we can keep natural colostrum around.

We can potentially buy it from dairies, collect it from our own cows.

If we're gonna have colostrum on hand, typically we're gonna keep it frozen for a lot of the year.

If we've got a natural source of colostrum, we need to remember to thaw that slowly.

We don't wanna put it in a microwave.

A microwave to heat that up is gonna potentially kill those immunoglobulins and all the things that create passive immunity.

So, that's a gradual process we go through there.

There's also a lot of commercially available colostrum replacers, and we can buy those at a lot of farm stores, buy them online potentially.

If we're gonna use something like that, we're gonna end up mixing it with water and use that feeding tube to actually get it into a calf.

We wanna make sure we've got a really strong immunoglobulin content in that and an actual colostrum replacer as opposed to a colostrum supplement if we're gonna go that route.

So, we'll continue to talk about calving and some of the things we need to be prepared for in the next few weeks.

But one of the things producers are encouraged to have on hand as we go into any calving season is a few doses of colostrum just to make sure we're getting those calves off, getting those immune systems stimulated, and keep them healthy and off to a good start.

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

(bright playful music) - It's that time in the show where we check in with the crop markets with our crop marketing specialist, Dr. Kim Anderson.

So Kim, there's some activity over the past few weeks.

So, what's going on?

- Well, you look at wheat prices, they took a beating this last week.

You go back to the September time period, we had wheat prices up oh, $9.75.

Came into September and October, leveled off around 8.50 somewhere and then came down and hit that $8 level.

And just last week we broke out of that, broke through that $8 support level.

Got down to around $7.70.

Now if you go into Panhel it's about a dime higher.

You go down to Southern Oklahoma, Snyder, that area, it's oh, it's 50 cents less.

Now if you're looking at corn, $7.70 for corn out in October.

Corn worked its way down into, oh, into November time period.

Got down around 7, came up to close to $8.

Came back down.

It's around $7.15.

Down a little bit this week but leveled out at the end of the week.

You look at soybeans, $14.80.

Been relatively flat for the last couple weeks.

Not going on there.

At cotton, we've got a couple cents increase in cotton to about 80 cents.

- So is there any chatter going on in the markets for why we're seeing those movements?

- Well, if you look this past week, we had the Seedings Report came out to increase Planet Acres for your winter wheat crop.

You go down to Australia, they've harvested a 1.5 billion bushel crop.

The old record last year, 1.34 billion bushels.

The record before that was 1.17.

Around 900 million bushels average for Australia and they got 1.5 billion bushels.

Now, there's a quality problem there.

It started raining as they got into harvest.

Maybe 50% of that's gonna be into feed wheat.

If you're looking at corn and beans, you gotta go to South America.

They're watching Brazil mostly, Argentina some, they've been lowering those soybean crops and the corn crops because of weather problems down in that area.

- So early in the show, Brian Arnall mentioned maybe some stabilization with the fertilizer prices.

What are you hearing about fertilizer prices going into the new year?

- Well, if you look over the last year, you look at Urea prices, prices per ton.

We came into the war.

They got up to around a thousand dollars.

We came into the year summers relatively high and they've trended lower into the fall, into the winter.

The Urea prices are around $750 a ton, around 85 cents per pound event.

If you're looking at potash prices, it got up to $900 down to around 765.

So, fertilizer prices are coming down and that's the point we can make with these prices.

Of course, as you go around Oklahoma and other areas, those prices are gonna vary quite a bit.

But the trend has been lower and we do have significantly lower prices than we did at the peak.

- So, you know, every year you're always hammering home the importance of protein.

So, is there gonna be any premium for protein in the market?

- Well, right now you've got about a 40 to 50 cent premium from 11 to 12 protein.

You've gotta ask a question on your nitrogen prices that we just talked about.

At 85 cents per pound of N, can you get a protein premium or can you get additional yields at the current nitrogen prices?

And I'd say there's a positive, 'yes' answer to that.

(country music) - All righty.

Thanks Kim.

Dr. Kim Anderson, Grain Marketing Specialist here at Oklahoma State University.

- Finally today, the heartwarming story about the landscape architect who's helping ensure that all children can enjoy themselves on the playground.

Our video production manager, Craig Woods put together this story.

- [Narrator] Lenny Hughes' path as an award-winning landscape architect began on his family's farm in Wetumpka, Oklahoma.

- My father, he was a surveyor for Hughes County.

And so with that, I grew with the love and passion of outdoors and farming.

This is, like I said, a rural farming community and just being available to be one with nature.

- [Narrator] Lenny received an associate degree in horticulture from Eastern State Junior College, but was still unsure what he wanted to do after graduation.

He discovered landscape architecture at OSU.

After a visit with the professors, he fell in love with the program and decided to join.

- The first semester was really, really hard and I actually almost dropped out of the program.

- He got very overwhelmed because he's kind of scared and worried that he probably cannot handle this particular course because he never know how to sketch it.

- I was leaving the campus and walking down the Ag hall stairs and I saw Professor Hsu, and I said, "Hey, take a good look at me 'cause this may be the last time that I am coming to your class."

And, he said, "Well, why?"

I said, "Well, I'm sitting here in class and everyone is drawing all these incredible horses and other landscapes and I can barely draw a stick figure."

And he told me, he said "If you stick with me, I will help you."

- Then we kind of step aside and then talk about what is landscape architecture.

I told him that landscape architecture is more than just friends.

We're dealing with the land, water environment, people, societies.

- [Narrator] Four years later, he graduated at the top of his class.

- During his senior years, he became a good member of my family.

He's more than just a student, so he became a family friend.

- [Narrator] Lenny lives in the Dallas area with his wife Erica and son Chase.

He's Vice President and Regional Director of Planning and Landscape Architecture for Half Associates.

- Really, my job now is transcended from the initial planner landscape architect to, it's more about people and how do I bridge and foster relationships?

How do I connect the built environment with people?

How do I make this a better place for everyone?

- [Narrator] Lenny's work can be seen across the Dallas area.

The Trinity Forest Master plan he's working on will create an urban forest network throughout the city.

- So when I graduate college, I focused on helping others, sharing ideas, and being compassionate.

- [Mr. Coon] He was honored recently by our Department of Horticulture and Landscape Architecture.

We're really proud to call him as one of our alumni and he supported our students in a lot of different ways.

Really been an inspiration for them.

Internship opportunities in their firm.

All have been great ways of contributing back to OSU.

- [Narrator] But one of his favorite projects was designing an accessible playground in the north Texas area.

'Casey's Clubhouse,' is named after seven year old Casey born with a neuromuscular disease.

The completed project is a reminder that landscape architecture is more than plants.

- [Lenny] So once it was done, they held a community event in celebration, and I was able to see there was a child, he had crutches; and so he was able to walk up the playground ramp by himself, go up to the highest level and he took one of the crutch he threw it down the slide and he take another crutch and threw it down the slide, and able to slide down himself without being assisted.

And to me, just being able to see that and be the experience and be a part of it was amazing.

(inspiring music) - [Narrator] Celebrating Lenny Hughes, 2022 Ferguson College of Agriculture, distinguished alumnus.

- That'll do it for SUNUP this week.

Remember, you can see us anytime on our website, and also follow us on YouTube and social media.

From the Pecan Orchard at the Cimarron Valley Research Station, I'm Lindel Stout, and we'll see you next time at SUNUP (country guitar music)