Good morning everyone.

We have a great show lined up for you today on SUNUP.

It's safety first on the ranch for both people and animals.

Stay tuned for some of the best tips on handling cattle.

Then new technology put to the test in the field.

Find out what the Wheat Rover can instantly capture about the crop.

And more from the recent Wheat Field Day at Lahoma.

Learn about wheat varieties crossbred to combat weeds.

Grab that hot cup of coffee because SUNUP starts right now.

Welcome to SUNUP everyone.

We begin this morning talking about ranch management.

Of course using a squeeze chute is a common practice that takes well practice to become more efficient.

And of course safety for people and animals is always paramount.

Here's Dr.

Dave Lalman our extension beef cattle specialist with more.

I'm David Lalman extension beef cattle specialist Oklahoma State University.

I thought I'd just mention a couple of tips relative to working with squeeze chutes especially for people who are new to the beef cattle industry.

So first of all one thing you might do to get your cattle used to nearly any facility is to just kind of if you have the opportunity, not everyone will I realize, but if you have the opportunity to run the animals through gently with everything open just so they know that it's a friendly place and they're not always going to get poked with a needle when they're in that squeeze chute.

And over time that would probably slow them down, calm them down.

Secondly some cattle or some animals are probably going to move through that squeeze chute pretty fast regardless.

So you know your herd on average might be gentle but you're generally always going to have some animals that are going to be nervous in there and hit that head catch pretty hard.

And so we discovered is that when they do that when they hit that head catch too hard you can cause bruising and even some inflammation in their shoulders.

And so we put pads on our squeeze chute just to help minimize that injury.

Also this particular squeeze chute thought I might just point out this breast bar and that's really handy to have for bigger cattle.

You know you're probably going to have to have five, six hundred pound calves or bigger to be able to utilize that very well.

But you know how animals tend to go down on their knees or down on their chest while they're in the squeeze chute and that helps prevent that.

Makes them a lot easier to work with.

When cattle go down like that they can be very difficult to get up and to get your vaccinations in the right place ear tag them so on and so forth.

So those are my tips for handling cattle in a squeeze chute.

Good morning everyone this is state climatologist Gary McManus with your Mesonet weather report.

Well I had a pretty good week off last week but unfortunately drought didn't and shockingly drought improved in some parts of the state and got worse in others.

So let's take a look at that new map.

So take a look at this new map.

We did have some improvements across eastern Oklahoma.

Those are the areas where the best rains fell over the last seven days.

We'll see that here in a minute.

But we also had increases in both coverage and intensity of the extreme to exceptional drought D3-D4 across the western parts of the state including a large area from southwestern now up into central Oklahoma of that exceptional drought that's the D4.

That's the worst on the drought monitor category.

Now as I've told you before the drought monitor works from Tuesday morning to Tuesday morning so anything that falls after that that goes on next week's map.

This is the rainfall we had to work with this week.

Again we can see some decent rains across north central northeast Oklahoma east central and the panhandle in some areas but what we also see is that large area from south central up through northwest Oklahoma generally less than a quarter inch of rainfall in that area in some cases less than a tenth of an inch of rainfall.

So that's the area where we had that drought increase from this week prior to last week.

We're going to go back and take a look at the water year to date rainfall.

This starts in October 1st 2025.

This map runs through June 2nd and again we can see some pretty decent rainfall down across southeastern east central and northeast Oklahoma but look over there in western Oklahoma where we have generally less than 10 inches of rain and in fact some areas have less than 7 inches of rain less than 6 inches less than 5 inches as we get out into the panhandle.

So those are the areas that are continuing to see those drought impacts multiply and worsen.

The same time frame we look at the departure from normal rainfall map.

These maps are from the Oklahoma Mesonet.

Pretty easy to see where across west central southwestern northwest Oklahoma up in the panhandle really bad conditions less than you know 10 inches below normal.

In some cases 11 inches 12 inches below normal.

We also see that across east central and southeast Oklahoma but that area always receives more rain so it's a little bit a little bit counterintuitive.

So to take into account the areas that receive more rainfall over that time frame on average or normally we go to the percent of normal rainfall map again October 1st through June 2nd and you see a large area of west Oklahoma less than 50% of normal rainfall and in fact some areas less than 40% getting close to 30% and that also includes parts of the Oklahoma panhandle.

And if we take a look from space at the relative greenness map from our OK fire program here at the Mesonet we can see areas across western north central and the panhandle just very poor looking vegetative conditions.

Again many places out across western Oklahoma in the panhandle it still looks like winter unfortunately.

Any bit of rain will help especially as we get into the hotter months of summer but right now things are just looking pretty bleak out across western Oklahoma up in the north central Oklahoma.

One added benefit the more it rains during the summer in Oklahoma the more mild that summer is going to be.

Now we're not talking about heat index just on the thermometers but that rainfall would certainly be welcome.

That's it for this time we'll see you next time on the Mesonet weather report.

We're here now with Dr.

Todd Hubbs our OSU extension grain marketing specialist and Todd it's been a few weeks since we've talked to you we're kind of getting into the middle of wheat harvest and prices seem to have taken a drop a little bit what's kind of going on with that?

Yeah hard red winter wheat prices have dropped for the last couple of weeks severely we're back down the range you were before the May production report.

Despite one of the lowest crops for hard red winter wheat since the 1950s we've seen the price take a bunch out of it recently.

I think what we're seeing is a lot of the weather premium coming out of the wheat market and some of the geopolitical risk premium coming out of it as well.

We've had some rains in the southern plains and other parts of the plains I think it's too late for the hard red winter wheat crop but the market's still taking some price out of it I think and we'll find out next week when we get the crop production report for June.

I don't expect big changes in their hard red crop at all.

You know we've seen harvest start here in Oklahoma the reports have been not great you know spotty horrible to just bad in a lot of places.

It seems like we've disconnected from oil price so when we had that straight-a-whore moose issue in our fight with our end we sort of linked wheat to oil and if oil went up wheat went up that's not happening anymore.

Oil's going up but wheat's disconnected now and that's a problem so we might need some issues with the spring planted crops like corn and soybeans to get us moving.

Yeah is there any good news in with the wheat markets looking forward?

Yeah as we do look forward the world balance sheet is tightening up some but with this energy price shot going around the world you I'm sort of concerned about economic growth in places like East Asia where they're really dependent on Middle Eastern oil and petrochemicals so I'm a little bit concerned about how you know our wheat will look the wheat market in general look and how trade flows will work out but I think we'll see it come back a little bit.

Yeah and you mentioned summer crops how are those markets looking and how could those maybe impact wheat?

Well corn and soybeans are getting planted in a timely manner around large parts of the country in the Corn Belt they're just a couple of places they're a little slow that tends to happen it's nothing to be concerned about we start to see some dryness creep into the Corn Belt the heart of the Corn Belt that was North Dakota well South Dakota Eastern South Dakota Nebraska and parts of Western but their forecast for rain this week and into next week so we might see some you know relief in those areas of the country and that'd be great for those folks so right now there's not really a lot of concern we still see good demand both export wise for corn and ethanol grind for corn we've seen gas demand moderate a little bit but it's not really falling off yet and so we're still seeing ethanol getting blended really well Milo has also been getting grind good grind for ethanol use as well so we had a decent crop last year and while we are exporting more particularly to China we have we have that Milo to use for that so I think the demand side of corn and Milo still strong but we had a huge crop last year and I think there's some concern about what kind of acreage we'll actually see this year.

What are you looking forward to within the next few weeks coming up?

Well we have another crop production report next week on Thursday a next swipe at what size that winter wheat crop will be I don't think they're going to move that very much from USDA if there is some movement I think it'll be slight I don't expect another shocker like we had in May and just how the crop progresses and the weather progresses throughout the United States but particularly in the Corn Belt and here in the Southern Plains and how our spring planted crops develop right now there doesn't seem to be any issues I'm also looking in the northern hemisphere particularly for wheat how that you and Russian and Ukrainian in the Black Sea Romania area in Kazakhstan how that all finishes up but right now it's looking okay.

All right well thanks for catching up with us Todd.

Yep.

Wheat harvest is officially underway here in the state the Oklahoma Wheat Commission is reporting that 100% of the wheat is headed out and 8% of the crop is harvested.

Wheat conditions show that the crop is 2% excellent 11% good 33% poor and 20% very poor.

We'll have more updates on this year's harvest in the weeks to come right here on SUNUP.

Good morning Oklahoma and welcome to Cow-Calf Corner.

Our topic this week is teat and udder confirmation and beef cattle and teat and udder confirmation we seldom have to think about it unless there's a problem but it is a very economically important trait in cow-calf production.

Substandard teat and udder confirmation can lead to a lot of problems it can be a drain on profitability it requires physical labor to actually milk out a quarter to try to save the quarter help a baby calf nurse long-term problems it impacts cow longevity in a negative way increases the likelihood we're gonna have sick calves reduces weaning weights in calves overall it can be a real problem.

The nice thing about teat and udder confirmation like I say if we're not having to deal with issues that's a good sign but if we are it is a moderately heritable trait think of it about the long the same lines as traits like weaning weight and yearling weight improvement can be made through selection if we apply selection pressure and we do have some tools available and some things that we can use in order to improve it.

First thing from the cow side it is critical that we evaluate teat and udder confirmation as soon as a calf is born no more than 24 hours after a calf is born that is literally the moment of truth that's when we've got to have good teat and udder confirmation to permit those calves to get the most important meal of their life that first nursing of colostrum and getting in an adequate quantity and so if we've got cows and a moderately heritable trait and we're seeing problems with teat and udder confirmation there we don't want to keep replacement heifers out of those particular cows a lot easier to evaluate at that in the cow herd than it is to try to be taking into an account in weaned heifer calves or yearlings when we're actually selecting those replacements.

The other thing that's nice about this is we can address it through sire selection the American Angus Association in the past year has came out with teat and udder score EPDs now they're based on the chart that you see on screen right now this is also a chart that we can use in commercial cow-calf production to keep records and evaluate teat and udder confirmation but these records or this chart is actually used by Angus breeders to submit data within contemporary groups and using scores of one through nine where nine are our best scores indicating the most refined teats and the tightest udder suspension basically a higher EPD score for either of these traits reflects the direction we want to go if we've got substandard teat and udder confirmation in our cow herd presently.

Hope this helps and as always thanks for joining us on Cow-Calf Corner this week.

Our coverage continues of the recent wheat field day at the North Central Research Station at Lahoma.

Today OSU Ferguson College of Agriculture students demonstrating in the field what's known as the new wheat rover designed to make data collection easier for researchers.

SUNUP's Elizabeth Hokit put together our story.

A unique piece of equipment designed to help out during a busy season.

Today at the Lahoma field day producers get a first -hand look at how it could make their lives easier.

Yes so behind us we have a wheat rover it's a remote control cart designed to drive over wheat rows and take pictures for data collection to assess wheat health and how well it's growing.

Eli Reynolds a recent graduate of the OSU Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering program is one of the students who helped design the latest version of the rover.

So the Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering department had a manufactured wheat carts in the past and me and my partner came up with our own original design both modeled and manufactured by ourselves to try to fix the problems that the other carts had had in the past so it's a completely unique design based off of what the department has done in past iterations.

With support from researchers like Amanda Silva the cart is making its way to the wheat fields.

So this is a project that we are very excited about it's one step that Oklahoma State University is taking into using technology to help us provide information for farmers and so it's not only using this phenotyping cart for research but also for extension purposes.

I think this will be a great tool for us to improve the way that or our efficiency by which we characterize the varieties that we test in the program the efficiency by which we develop varieties at Oklahoma State University and also that we provide information for farmers.

With massive amounts of data to collect efficiency is key.

So nowadays everything that we do in our programs is by hand so we have a lot of people just collecting plants collecting biomass counting number of plants measuring plant height plant growth doing headcounts you know doing a lot of laborious work like first hollow stem measurements and so what we are really looking is how can we improve this variety characterization using sensors.

We have to offer different solutions or different ways to work better more efficiency and have a high precision accurate data collation for research in the future.

PhD student Francisco Espero brings his field knowledge to the table during the engineering process.

In the case of the breeders the plant breeders they have more than thousand plots they have to evaluate and collect data every day almost every day so thinking in that we up for a real design is this phenotype incarnate.

It takes a lot of man-hours out of counting and looking at fields visually it also takes away a lot of human error you're leaving it to a program that will operate the same every time and we've created something that can be used by almost anybody and so it opens opportunities for a lot of people who may not have experience to be able to use something that's user-friendly and really efficient at what they're trying to accomplish.

In these sensors we can have different ways to measure different things in the plant like plant height, plant color that would help us to understand a little bit more on the plant health on growth stage that is really important for our management purposes and so those are a few traits that we are really looking into using this wheat rover to just start collecting data.

And this isn't just benefiting producers.

This is also a great opportunity for students to work with technology to learn using technology not only in the lab but also how things really work in the field as crops are growing and the things that we need to keep in mind when using technology.

You gain a lot of really good insight about what a customer is actually looking for and it's really helpful to take that work outside of the classroom and apply it in a real-world setting where there's real things involved like wheat and expectations from somebody on a project that you're going to complete.

Boosting efficiency, teaching students and changing the future of wheat research.

From the North Central Research Station in Lahoma, I'm Elizabeth Hokit.

Also at Lahoma more from OSU's wheat breeder Dr.

Brett Carver.

Today we learn about the wheat improvements to help combat weeds.

Well the coaxium management system is branded in such a way to recognize two very essential essential parts of controlling weeds, grassy weeds in Oklahoma and the Great Plains for that matter.

Those two parts are genetics and the second part is herbicide.

So the herbicide is Quazalipop, that's the chemical name.

The genetics depends on the breeding program and so this is a marriage that we've been working on for quite some time now.

We would have talked about this several years ago but in 2018 that is when we really started making the crosses that now support the genetic material in the field today.

Then in 2022 we took that material basically from the greenhouse or from experimental fields where we just really weren't yet measuring yield.

We took them to the field for yield measurements.

So now this is 2026.

It's time and we have enough yield data now that we can we can start making decisions.

In terms of yield testing back in 2022 we started with a series of about a hundred and fifty what we call double haploids.

They're just instant inbreds that we have made at Kansas State University and we do that for all of our breeding program and a big part of it.

And so that that got us into this game pretty quick but at the same time we were working on conventional forms of breeding and now that material is cycling its way through.

That's going to be what we talk about perhaps next year.

Okay but now it's about the double haploids.

That's the first material that became available.

And so out of those 150 we've narrowed it down to three this year.

Went into the field with three.

They all have a similar beginning of the number and now that they end in 031, 055, and 076.

What I think we're seeing this year with this drought and we would definitely in a pattern of drought we can't ignore it.

I'm looking at the one that I think gives us the best chance for the farmer.

For us we're competing so our farmers can compete so it gives us a good good chance to compete with other breeding programs and that is this 055X.

And this 055X has a very familiar background.

The part that's Oklahoma derived is called Smith's gold.

I mentioned Smith's gold many times.

It's part of Wyatt.

It's part of many varieties that we're talking about possibly releasing.

But the 055X does resemble Smith's gold in its behavior across the state, in its trait package.

So good stripe rust resistance, good drought tolerance, good hessian fly resistance, which is lacking I think in some of this coaxing material.

Not necessarily ours.

But also I think this line is widely adapted.

It's not just adapted to a certain part of our state.

That gives producers an idea of plasticity.

How well that variety can be relied upon under different conditions.

So that's the one we're going into this summer thinking we would ask for approval to release.

And that approval process is a little more complicated than most varieties.

We have to get two kinds of approval, internal and external.

We're collecting that data to justify that approval.

But anyway so you know if the 055 doesn't work out we have two other options.

The 031, that's more of a uncharted related line.

Great grazing package.

055 it should not be grazed.

But the 031 could.

Has probably the best disease package.

But I don't think it has the drought tolerance.

The 076, best yield and quality put together.

But what it lacks is something I haven't mentioned yet.

And that is tolerance to the herbicide.

We want the herbicide to do its job.

We want it to kill the weeds.

But we don't want to damage the wheat in the process.

And and so yeah we use a little bit different formulation of the herbicide than what farmers use.

That's a much more stringent.

And we're seeing some some injury on the 076.

Whether or not we see that with the farmers version of the chemical, we're trying to find that out.

Thanks to Jeff Wright with Oklahoma Foundation Seed.

He's doing that very work right now.

So you know we have some options.

And you know beyond that I think the options even get better.

So next year we would be looking at a line that ends in 088.

0 double 8.

And that's also I mentioned the word uncharted.

But that's also in the pedigree of that line.

Plus it has everything else that the 055 has.

This I think is our premium combination of grazability, yield potential, and quality.

All in one package.

That's that's important because the 055 I didn't mention it but it lacks quality.

Lacks the quality we're so used to talking about in very favorable terms.

But the 088 certainly has it.

The 116 we're putting on display at the Lahoma tour is a baker's and uncharted combination with this donor trait that we're getting from Colorado that provides the herbicide tolerance.

But this is one that would make Butler's Gold look a little slow.

It's quick to mature.

Very quick.

So it's in that category of short season kind of weeds.

And then I mentioned the conventional breeding.

The last one that's on display is called 937X.

Out of our conventional program where we have multiple rounds as that line was being developed and as it went through gene recombination.

Which means we had more opportunities to improve herbicide tolerance beyond just the two genes that we're targeting as part of the trait package.

There's other genes involved we know that.

And so we can bring those genes in and combine that with the targeted genes like I think we have with 937.

Now we're going to have something where the farmers will have an insurance package that has a little bit less baggage.

You know we know that that insurance is going to be stout.

It will hold up under a lot of different conditions and a lot of different places.

I'm pretty excited about what we had to offer today and what we have to offer next year and the year of beyond.

Thanks so much for joining us for SUNUP this week.

A reminder you can see our content anytime on our website.

Follow us on social media and stream us on our YouTube channel anytime at youtube.com/SUNUPTV.

I'm Lyndall Stout.

Have a great week everyone and we'll see you next time at SUNUP.