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

I'm Lyndall Stout.

As we move deeper into summer, a common insect that can cause serious issues for horses is showing up in larger numbers this year.

We're talking about blister beetles.

Here's SUNUP's Kurtis Hair, and our extension alfalfa specialist, Kelly Seuhs.

- Well, it's in between cutting for the alfalfa producers.

So Kelly, let's take a look back into the spring.

How was the alfalfa crop looking in, going into summer?

- Early on, we had some really good moisture.

Guys were cutting early.

Some folks were cutting early, late April, early May.

They had really good cuttings.

Continued moisture was progressing pretty well through the second cutting in maybe late May, early June.

This time of the year, if it's dry land alfalfa, probably not so much.

Things are slacking off a little bit.

We may have a late cutting later in the summer, late, early fall.

But right now, if it's dry land, with all this heat and dryness we're having right now, it's probably not too much going on as far as the hay cutting.

- Yeah, for when it comes to the cutting, maybe not much going on, but probably when it comes to the pests, this is the time of year where a lot of producers are going out in their field and starting to notice more activity.

- Right, I've gotten several reports of striped blister beetle activity, mostly in the northeastern parts of the state so far.

But in some other reports as well, this is the time of year that we normally see that activity.

We have other species that are common in Oklahoma, but the one we have to really worry about and deal with is the striped blister beetle.

They're the ones that had the most concentration of cantharidin, which is a toxic chemical that can cause damage to livestock, and when feeding the hay to that particular livestock interest.

But especially horses, they can cause severe problems and even death to horses.

- Well, horses obviously were, our horse owners are always concerned about blister beetles.

But when it comes to other livestock in our ruminant animals, are they as big of an issue?

- They can be affected, but not near as much.

We don't see near as many problems with the ruminant animals, cows and goats, things like that, as we do horses.

- So out in the fields, what is a good way for producers to scout?

Is it gonna be pretty obvious with blister beetles?

- It is sometimes hard to, if you've got an alfalfa field, if you're cutting, or if you're getting ready to cut, scouting and going out, and looking for swarms.

The striped blister beetles are notorious for swarming, and they're kind of gregarious, and they like to congregate together.

And so this time of year, they're looking at if you're going out and scouting, you'll see a lot of activity.

You'll see the ground tends to move.

You'll see even up on a swather.

You'll see, if it's a big enough area, you'll see things moving, and you'll see some activity like that, and that's a good sign.

In a smaller situation where, in a pasture that has a lot of weeds, or some other areas around your barn, you might see just a lot of feeding activity, and you'll be able to see them on the plants pretty easily that way.

- Because it's not just alfalfa, they're getting to other pastures.

- Right, right, right.

I'm getting reports from hay meadows, things like that, that are being infested.

Grass pastures, even areas around barns where people keep their livestock.

That's a problem as well if they're attracted to the flowering structures of the weeds.

And so if you can control the weeds in that area, you have the better chance of reducing the number of beetles in your area.

- So why this summer?

Is it a kind of a cyclical thing or is it just right conditions?

- They thrive in hot, dry conditions.

But we've also in the last several years, and this year, as you've noticed, there's a lot of grasshoppers.

They're kind of symbiotic.

If we have a lot of grasshopper population in one summer, then the blister beetles later in the year, they feed on grasshopper eggs that are laid in the short areas of the soil in cracks and crevices.

They feed on them to get a good nutrient source, to over winter, they come out next spring.

And if they have a good food source and wintering, then they can come out in full force next spring.

We see that they come out in about late May to mid-June.

And they turn in, they pupate, turn into adults, and the cycle starts again for the foraging.

- So when it comes to management, you discussed a little bit about weed control.

But is there also management that you could do maybe for grasshoppers to keep blister beetle populations down as well?

- Grasshoppers are a challenge because going into that season, the later it gets in the season, the harder they are to control, because they get bigger, they're more mobile, they get to move around quite a bit.

So early in the season, as early in the season as possible, you start seeing them activity.

Then it's a good idea to maybe treat those early.

And when they're less mobile, and less able to move around and get out of your treatment zone.

- If you can get that done early, then you have a better chance of controlling them later in the season.

- Alright, thanks Kelly.

Kelly Seuhs, alfalfa specialist here at Oklahoma State University.

And if you'd like a fact sheet about blister beetles, go to our website sunup.okstate.edu.

(upbeat country music) - Hello, Wesley here for this week's Mesonet weather report.

Summers are always brutal in Oklahoma, but this year's weather seems to be overly oppressive.

Once the rain stopped about a month ago, we have been experiencing a classic flash drought situation.

Rainfall has been very limited and spotty in nature lately.

Most of the state has experienced about a month without a quarter inch of rain.

This makes the last 30 days the driest period of time since 1980.

Without rain the plants have been using up the stored soil moisture.

Evapotranspiration is the loss of moisture from plant and soil surfaces.

On Tuesday, this short crop evapotranspiration map shows it would take a quarter to a third of an inch of water a day to maintain maximum production.

Of course, with dry soils plant production has been curtailed and actual numbers would be lower.

This 10 inch fractional water map from the same day shows 0.1 or 0.2 at most locations.

With this product, 1 is as wet and 0 is as dry as the sensor can read at that depth.

Just 30 days earlier, you can see the map was much different with most of the state green and in great shape.

Unfortunately, this dry pattern appears to be locked in for a while with no immediate relief in the forecast maps.

Now here's Gary with the latest drought information.

- Thanks, Wes.

And good morning everyone.

Well, to quote Howard Cosell from a boxing match back in the day, "Once again, we find ourselves in a terrible situation."

Let's get straight to that new drought monitor map and I'll show you why I'm saying that.

Well, pretty easy to see why.

We now have the entire state filled with color.

The eastern third of the state now almost completely in moderate drought, whereas they've been outta drought for quite a while.

The rest of the state, at least in those abnormally dry conditions, that yellow drought is on the rise.

Once again, across Oklahoma a classic flash drought situation.

It's pretty shocking too, when you consider the amount of rainfall we had previous to this last 30-day period, take a look.

From that May 1st through June 10th period 5, 6, 7, 8 inches up as much as 15 inches across western Oklahoma, and even up to 20 inches across parts of eastern Oklahoma.

So a ton of rainfall, drought on the run, and then you go to the last 30-day period or even a little bit more than that, and you see the drastic difference in the rainfall totals.

In fact, much of the state struggles to get even as much as a quarter inch over that timeframe.

So from feast to famine really quickly, classic flash drought, once again.

Let's look at that last 30-day period, June 13th through July 12th.

And this could extend a little bit forward a little bit previous to that, but that period is the driest such period on record dating back to at least 1921.

So at least a hundred years.

You can see the percent of normal values.

Lots of zeros, lots of single digits on there.

Really the far western panhandle came out the best, above a hundred percent of normal.

So they did at least some good above normal rainfall amounts helping their drought situation, but the rest of the state plunging back into drought.

And since we are in the warm season when those rainfall amounts are higher, the deficits are much higher over that 30-day period.

A little bit longer than 30 days, but still you can see those deficits from 2 to 3 to 4 inches, close to 5 inches across parts of eastern Oklahoma.

So much of the state needing a good drink of rainfall.

So we do need some good rains.

Unfortunately, we're heading right into the bulk of summer and as Wes showed you, lots of heat, lots of bad soil moisture now.

So I'm afraid we're in for a while, watch for drought to continue to strengthen, but we will definitely keep an eye on it for you.

That's it for this time.

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

(upbeat country music) - Dr. Kim Anderson, crop marketing specialist is here now.

Kim, the WASDE was released this week.

We quickly saw wheat prices drop 45 cents.

My question, is the report really that bearish?

- I don't think so.

You look at prices over the last month and a half or so.

Go back to mid May where $3.13 went down to $8.13, came back 60 or 70 cents where it dropped off.

We just took a little bit off, but if you look at those WASDE numbers I do not think they support that lower price.

World production, 28.4 billion bushels.

- Up from 28.3, nothing.

Ending stocks, 9.83 billion bushels up from 9.81, insignificant.

U.S. production at 1.78 billion bushels up slightly from 1.74 insignificant.

U.S. ending stocks, they raised 'em to 660 million bushels up from 639.

That may have a little impact but I think it's overridden by hard red winter wheat, 265 million bushels versus 353 last year.

I think all these numbers are basically little bit bearish but over the long run, I think they could be bullish.

- So what do you think is behind this 45 cent drop?

- Well, I think it's the Russian Ukraine situation.

You look at Russian production, it was at 3 billion bushels.

Some analysts have it at 3.1, a near record.

Their exports at 1.5 billion bushels for this next year.

1.2 last year.

Ukraine 716 million bushels versus an average of 1 billion.

They were, that was their production.

You look at their exports, 367 million bushels versus 691.

Russian export increase offsets that Ukraine and eight vessels ships moved into Ukrainian ports this week to load agriculture commodities.

And I think that scared the market a little bit and that drove prices down momentarily.

- Well, how high do you think the market can support wheat prices?

- I think the market, the USDA was predicting $10.50 for the next marketing year.

I think that's a little high.

I think the market can support $9-$10 wheat prices.

- And what is your reasoning behind that $9-$10 price?

- Look at the stocks they use.

That's the how much is used during the year divided by the, are the ending stocks divided by the use.

You go back to 2012 and 13, the world ending stocks were 6% below normal and the U.S. was 7% below normal and prices averaged $7.77.

Well, this year world ending stocks are projected to be 10% below normal, compared to 7%, and U.S. ending stocks to use at 28% below normal compared to seven.

I think 10% and 28 is going to support a higher price than $7.77.

And I think it could be as high as nine and maybe up to 10.

- Okay, well we know you'll keep track of it.

Kim, thanks a lot.

We'll see you next week.

(upbeat music) - Good morning, Oklahoma.

Welcome to Cow-Calf Corner.

This week's topic is more for purebred seed stock cow calf operations.

And we talk about a technology we can use to try to improve our accuracy of selection, specifically DNA typing.

Now it's important as we talk about DNA typing and the information we can gain from it that we realize it's still critical to collect phenotypic data.

Birth weights, weaning weights, yearling weights the whole litany of performance measures that we have historically collected is important to continue to collect because as we think about the technology of DNA typing over time it is that phenotypic data that permits us to train the markers, so to speak, and identify the alleles and learn more about their additive genetic effect on quantitative traits.

So this isn't something that replaces collection of data, it's still important, but at a time when input costs are so high we are possibly looking at having to early wean, maybe making some selection decisions at weaning as opposed to keeping those animals around longer and investing more in that input.

So what information can we get from DNA typing?

Basically about three things.

First, we can identify parentage.

And that's a pretty simple concept but where pedigrees are very critical long term to accurate genetic prediction sometimes mistakes get made, the neighbors bull jumps the fence, we pull the wrong straw of semen out whenever we were AI breeding a cow.

So it's always reassuring to be able to verify parentage on those animals.

Second thing that we can get is when we think about simply inherited qualitative traits, something like horn polled status, maybe color genes and different breeds of cattle.

We can learn if we have got heterozygous carriers that may still be polled where we're dealing with a polled allele being dominant but we may have a polled animal standing here.

It's still helpful to know if that animal potentially is homozygous polled or heterozygous polled.

And in some other cases, just knowing what kind of coat color inheritance we're gonna deal with.

The big thing we get from DNA typing or genomically enhanced EPD's if we want to think about 'em that way, is on our quantitative traits.

These are traits that are impacted by thousands if not tens of thousands of different genes.

And what we have learned in the 10 or 20 years we have been collecting data is there are certain alleles in the genome beef cattle that we're starting to learn more about the additive impact that they have on these quantitative traits like weaning.

- Yearling, birth weight, milk, marbling, everything that follows under that umbrella of quantitative traits, if we'll submit DNA, we actually get back updated EPDs, taking into account what genes we have identified, there are higher accuracy EPDs.

We get a bump that is about the equivalent of a bull siring his first calf crop and getting that data turned in.

So if we're in situations where making early selection decisions are helpful, DNA typing is gonna give us additional accuracy, is gonna update the EPDs on animals even before some of those records on animals early in life have been collected like a weaning or yearling weight, or some of that stuff that's gonna occur later on.

So in the end, it's a technology and a means to try to improve the accuracy of selection.

I suggest you contact your breed registry for proper instructions on DNA typing.

Every registry may do that a little bit different, but typically, we submit DNA in the form of a blood sample potentially on a DNA card or a tube, or potentially, hair follicles that have been pulled from the tail switch of the animal, but more information on that would be available through your respective registry.

Appreciate you joining us this week on Cow-Calf Corner.

(upbeat music) - When it comes to supplements, the Oklahoma GOLD program is a popular choice for producers, but how does it work with fall-born replacement heifers?

Here's OSU Extension Beef Cattle Specialist, Dave Lalman with some guidance.

- A few weeks ago, we talked about the economics of the Oklahoma GOLD supplementation program during late summer on growing cattle.

Recently, I had an email from a producer in Osage County that asked the question, well, how might that supplementation program benefit my replacement heifers?

This producer felt like his heifers were behind this year, and he has a fall calving program and he intends to breed his heifers in November.

It's interesting, our fall-born heifers this year are lighter than they normally are this time of year also.

The other thing that's interesting to me, we bailed our native hay meadows here west of Stillwater the end of June this year, which is earlier than we're normally able to get to them and they only tested 4.4% crude protein, and that was two different native hay meadows.

So normally, those would be six to 7 1/2, maybe even 8% protein.

Perhaps that part of the reason why the cattle are a little bit behind this year.

The Oklahoma GOLD program is one pound of a 38% protein supplement that includes the feed additive ionophore, which trade names for the two most common products there are Bovatec and Rumensin.

How might that benefit a fall-born heifer during the late summer, early fall period prior to the breeding season?

Dr. Beck and I just completed a literature review on the ionophore Rumensin, and in that literature review, we found 18 studies on that subject, and essentially what the benefit of the Rumensin product for those heifers was nine days earlier puberty, and that resulted in 16% more heifers having at least one cycle prior to the beginning of the breeding season.

And if you have at least one cycle prior to breeding, the other literature shows that the conception rate or fertility is higher in those heifers that have one or multiple cycles prior to breeding.

So that's how the Oklahoma GOLD program might benefit fall-born replacement heifers to be bred here in November.

(upbeat music) - Most Oklahoma ponds are green, thanks to microscopic algae distributed throughout the water column.

Algae is a normal occurrence in ponds, unless it becomes too thick.

When you have a very thick algal bloom, we are in danger of our most common fish kill scenario, and that is an algal die off.

Lots of cells are decomposing out there suddenly, and that results in the use of the dissolved oxygen in the pond and the suffocation of the fish, but there's something you can do to help prevent this, and that is keep an eye on your algal abundance.

- The simplest way to do this is to use a submerged object.

That's something that you can put down.

That's light colored.

You can submerge in the pond.

Typically on a sunny day, a submerged object will disappear from view in less than 18 inches.

If that object, disappears from view in less than 12 inches that is a big warning that a fish kill is possible because the algal bloom is getting too thick.

If you see this happening, work with your county extension office immediately to come up with some steps that you can take to try to correct or avoid the fish kill situation.

Do not worry too much about algae.

In fact, it is essential to have a healthy population of algae in your pond to produce oxygen for the fish.

But whenever it gets too thick, don't delay.

Pick up the phone and talk to your county extension office.

- Finally, today, when it comes to a natural disaster or other event that causes a mass loss of livestock it is important for emergency teams to be prepared to manage the situation.

SUNUPs Kurtis Hair takes us to a recent training session.

- When you walk outta here over the next three days you've gotta be able to understand what all these bullet points mean.

- Oklahoma State was involved in developing a train the trainer workshop.

And this train the trainer workshop was focused on how you manage animal mortalities.

This is in the event that we have mass mortalities due to an invasive pathogen, such as avian influenza or African swine fever virus.

And so we developed this workshop in conjunction with the University of Maine extension as well as USDA and others within the state of Oklahoma including the department of ag.

And essentially the whole goal of the workshop was to have people on site that knew how to manage animal mortalities.

And you might not think of this.

It's like, well, you never have enough animal mortalities to really need to manage them.

Well, in the event of a pathogen coming in, you have to manage these mortalities because those animals have to be managed in a way that they're not gonna spread that pathogen.

- We've been very, very fortunate in being able to put on a schooling here.

And it's been a big collaborative effort with a lot of industry and the university.

- [Kurtis] Gary Stone is a field veterinarian for the Oklahoma Department of Agriculture, Food and Forestry.

He says a train the trainer workshop like this one is essential.

- We are bringing people together to get them trained in the incidents of a catastrophic event that might occur.

It's not a matter of if it will occur.

It's a matter of when it occurs and we just need to be prepared.

And so this is a great training.

- You know, one of the most unfortunate things when a pathogen, especially a foreign agent pathogen comes into our large animal facilities is that you have to depopulate those.

And so essentially what happens is we have all these approved methods but not every approved method is very well understood.

- [Kurtis] Attendees of the workshop not only learn about these methods in a classroom but also get the chance to get a hands on experience.

- What you have here are five different compost piles that are used for one of the training programs that we have going on.

- [Kurtis] Bill Seekins is an associate with the University of Maine extension.

And today he's teaching trainees how to properly set up a composting station.

- Well, actually, almost anything that was once part of a plant or animal is potentially compostable.

The thermometers are used to indicate how much biological activity is going on in the pile because the more biological activity, the higher the temperature becomes in the pile.

- [Kurtis] The hotter the temperature, the better chance you have of killing pathogens - Whenever we're dealing with any of these events it's many people from many different agencies and universities and industry that have to cooperate to deal with these events.

And so this cooperative effort that's going on now reflects that kind of effort that's necessary to deal with these big events.

- We have to remember Oklahoma really.

We're an ag state.

We've got a lot of agriculture here, and this is about secure food for our population and feeding the world.

We have to remember agriculture is very, very important to the security of this nation.

- [Kurtis] In Payne County, I'm Kurtis Hair.

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

Remember you can see us anytime on our website, 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.

(upbeat guitar music)