(lively music) - Hello, everyone, and welcome to Sunup.

I'm Lyndall Stout.

Parts of the state saw some very welcome rain this past week, as we continue to think about and manage around drought including mapping out plans to feed livestock this winter.

Today, we're looking at some of the options with your cotton crop.

Here's our Extension Beef Cattle Specialist, Dr. Dave Lalman.

- A few weeks ago, we talked about the possibility of grazing failed cotton crop.

There's quite a bit of interest in that and cattle can do reasonably well, grazing cotton.

They will consume the leaf material, in particular, and the bolls of cotton contains a seed.

Those can be of moderate, nutritive value, somewhat like average-quality grass hay.

When a producer turns into a cotton field, there's gonna be quite a bit, initially, of grass around the edges of the field.

There might be some weeds that the cows can safely consume as forage.

Along with that leaf material, maybe a little bit of the stalk of the cotton plant, itself.

They're not gonna consume a lot of that stalk, but then certainly the bolls, also.

As the cows stay out there, and generally speaking, probably just as a general rule of thumb, around one cow per acre per month would be a a pretty good estimate or a conservative estimate of a decent stalking rate for that failed cotton crop.

The longer the cows are out there, the lower the quality of the forage that's available is going to be, because those cows are gonna consume the good stuff, first.

The heavier the stalking rate, the more rapid the quality of the forage will decline.

One good way to tell when it's time to move the cows, if you're strip grazing the failed cotton crop or if you're just gonna move them to another field, put a round bale of hay out there and when the hay disappears, you know it's time to move those cows.

So, in a tough year like this, you know, grazing failed cotton can be, at least, extend the grazing season.

And so, you know, just to get an estimate of, you know, the cost of doing that, we visited with producers in south central Nebraska about grazing corn stalks, you know, as one way to kind of get a handle on what the value of grazing a failed cotton crop might be.

And Dana Zuck is one of our Area Livestock Specialists.

Her family is there from south central Nebraska and Dana indicated that their family can find corn stalk grazing for about five to $10 per acre, per month.

So, to be conservative on our cotton crop here in Oklahoma, if we just double that $10 and say, for example, a producer would pay a cotton farmer $20 per acre for their cotton crop, you know that, and if that lasted a cow 30 days, that's still only about 67 cents per cow, per day.

So, still a good way to extend the grazing season and and be an economical way to maintain a few more of those cows.

(lively music) - Welcome to this week's Mesonet Weather Report.

I'm Wes Lee.

After spending most of this year with above normal temperatures, a powerful, cold front this week gave us a couple of days, well below normal.

On Tuesday, the maximum temperatures struggled to get out of the 50s.

This was about 15 to 20 degrees below the long term average.

That night, brought most of the state its first freezing temperatures of the season, dropping all the way down into the teens in far northeast counties.

This broke record low temperatures for that day at most stations above the blue line.

You can see on this map of hours below freezing, that the warm season growing period has ended now in pretty much all areas, except the southwest.

This freeze, while not a record early date for most, was well below the median freeze date based on a 30-year average, about a week earlier than normal in the panhandle, and about two weeks earlier in the north central and northeast regions.

This cold spell only hung around for a couple of days before returning us to our seemingly above normal, new normal temperatures.

Next week's temperature forecast will likely be cooler than normal for the first part of the week and hopefully raining followed by warmup.

- Gary is up next with a little improvement for some on the drought map.

- Thanks Wes, and good morning everyone.

Well, we got another rainfall in the month of October that makes two.

Was it enough to make improvements in the drought monitor?

Let's take a look.

Well, it was enough to make some improvements.

We do see now an area down in southwestern Oklahoma where some of those better rains fell.

An area of D2, which is severe drought cutting across the extreme drought, that darker red.

So that is an improvement.

But we did see some enhancements of drought also.

So up in far northwestern Oklahoma, a little bit more of that severe to extreme to exceptional drought.

Also a little bit more up into northeastern Oklahoma that exceptional drought, the darkest red color.

So we did see some improvements, but as it rained down in southern Oklahoma, it didn't rain elsewhere.

So that's why we got the mixed bag.

The severity of our drought is very much reflected in the top soil moisture.

This map from the USDA shows that percent short to very short across the state for the week ending October 16th, and it was 96% of the state at percent short to very short for that top soil moisture.

The worst in the country by a large degree, actually.

So not very good news there.

Hopefully this will improve on the next week's report.

With that last rainfall we had.

The 30 day rainfall from the Mesonet encompasses both of those October rainfall events and we see where those improvements were made down in southwestern Oklahoma, down into south central Oklahoma.

So that's where the best rain fell, and that's where the improvements were made.

Unfortunately for most of the state, an inch or less, so drought continuing to increase across other parts of the state.

And the departure from normal rainfall map that shows that pretty well from the Oklahoma Mesonet.

Again, even though we saw those pretty decent rain amounts down in southwestern Oklahoma, those were still mostly deficits as we go through the last 30 days.

So unfortunately, rain helps, but we need a lot more and across the larger area of the state.

And that's the key.

We get a rainfall every once in a while but we need rains more than just every couple of weeks.

We need those once a week at least, and a moderate, slow rainfall to help that soak into the soil alleviates some these drought impacts.

That's it for this time.

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

(bright music) - Continuing our conversations from the recent Rural Economic Outlook Conference, Courtney Cowley talks about supply chain challenges and some of the issues that are on the horizon.

- So my topic is about the Russian-Ukraine war and evolving developments in agricultural supply chains.

So because it's really about supply chains in general, I kind of start with the pandemic.

So we kind of walk it back a little bit to even prior to the pandemic, talk about kind where we were in the steady state in the ag economy, and then everything just got disrupted with the pandemic.

So we kind of start there because that's important because the pandemic was so disruptive, that we were still really working through some things by the time Russia invaded Ukraine in February of this year.

So particularly in markets for cattle, with Oklahoma being a very important cattle production state the pandemic had severe effects on the cattle market in particular.

So I'll be talking about that, and some of the reasons why these disruptions were so persistent and also impactful for producers.

But these disruptions have affected demand.

They've effectively, in some situations, you know, cut off demand or affected a producer's ability to get inputs or made inputs more expensive.

So a producer may have a plan at the beginning of the year and then Russia invades Ukraine, inputs go a lot higher than they expected them to.

And now all of a sudden, you know, we either, you know it might affect demand for credit from a producer, it might affect how much they have to pay for expenses, especially if they didn't already have those inputs on hand.

And then it can also affect the price they receive for the products that they produce that we're now harvesting.

We do both in-depth research into topics as well as monthly publications that we call Ag Finance Updates.

Those are all available on our website at kansascityfed.org.

And we have an agriculture page there that's completely dedicated to information about agriculture, whether that be... and we also publish all the data behind our reports too.

So, and since the pandemic we've also focused a lot on food markets.

So, agricultural producers are unique because they're not only producing agricultural commodities and food and feed, but they're also consumers of food as well.

So we also have some work on what's going on with food prices and inflation from that standpoint too.

I hope one of the things that people know about the Department of Agricultural Economics in particular is that there's a lot of graduates from this program that are doing, you know, really cool work.

Especially I was noticing in the ag policy space.

So one, I was at Texas A&M this last week and one of their assistant directors of their ag policy centers is Bart Fischer, who's an alumni here, we have a director on our Oklahoma City Board of Directors.

- Brady Sidwell, who's a, who's an alumni of the department.

And so I, I, and there's a lot of different examples too and I just think that I, I hope that students of the department are very proud of that fact and that the faculty know how much we appreciate them those of us that are out in the workforce now and how much we learned from conferences like this when we were here and from the faculty that really prepared us to, to do these these types of analysis that I do every day.

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

This week we continue to talk about some of the financial opportunities that exist for those of us in the cattle business as a result of the heat and droughts and things that we've lived through for the past several months.

As we talked about last week, we're at a cyclical low in terms of cow inventory.

A lot of cows continue to be liquidated.

Anytime we find that situation, it means the future values of all categories of cattle are gonna be higher.

If we have normally taken our calves and turned 'em into yearlings using wheat pasture, this year knowing that wheat pasture looks pretty, pretty gloomy as far as the potential for it.

We're gonna work through some numbers, take a look at the future's board, think about some cost to gains, and figure out what potentially exists for us to capture additional market value out of turning calves into yearling steers.

A peek at the future's board last Friday told us that the March contract for feeders was about a buck 79.

The May contract was about $1.85.

If we take a look at this week's USDA market summary, for what calves or steer cabs in particular are worth in Oklahoma.

A 476 pound steer averaged a little over a dollar 84 a pound, translates to a value of $876 on those steer calves.

Now, we could cash 'em in now at that value or take a look at some different limit feeding options to turn 'em into yearlings by next, next March or May.

A colleague of mine, Dr. David Lawman, put together a ration.

It's about one third dry distillers grain one third rolled corn, and one third chopped wheat hay.

And his math for prices at that time indicated that could be fed for about an 83 cent cost to gain and cattle that were weighing about 500 pounds would gain about 2.07 pounds per day on it.

At 85%, or excuse me, 85 cent cost to gain, some sort of ration that we can feed to gain at two pounds a day.

Over the next hundred and 80 days, we can turn a weaned calf weighing 476 into an 836 pound yearling by the beginning of next May.

We're gonna have a feed bill in that one at a little over $300.

It actually penciled out to about $306.

I add that $306 value onto the current value of that weaned calf that we didn't sell.

I factor in another 10% for opportunity costs, maybe some hay while we get those calves started on feed maybe some potential death loss.

I arrive at a break even of just shy of $1,300 that I need to get outta that yearling steer by next May.

According to the current futures board, at a buck 85 those 836 pound calves should be worth about 1,540 to 1,550 bucks, give or take.

Consult with a nutritionist, operate like a business, and assess a reasonable cost of gain.

For example, if we bump that cost to gain in this example all the way up to a buck 30 a pound, takes our break even up to about 1,480, which still leaves us a little bit of margin in there relative to the current futures board.

I hope this helps.

I encourage producers take the situations we're dealing with and find the opportunity in 'em.

Thanks for joining us this week on Cal Calf Corner.

(twangy music) - Dr. Kim Anderson, our crop marketing specialist, is here now.

Kim, what's happening in the crop markets this week?

- Well, it looks quiet, but there's quite a bit happening.

You look at wheat prices over the last two weeks we've lost about 40 cents in the wheat prices from around $9, 80, 85 cents down to $9.

You go to corn.

The market's taken 20 cents off of that in the last week or week and a half, down to around $7 and 50 cents.

Soybeans, they, as we talked about last week have just been a wallet around.

They're down about 35 cents this week to $13 and 25 cents.

And cotton, that's the one commodity that's taken a beating.

It's down about 7 cents from around 85 to 78 cents.

That's on the future's market.

Take about 3 cents off.

That gets at about 75 cents in southwestern Oklahoma.

- The drought is, of course, what we're talking about a lot.

How is it translating to the crop markets?

- It's having a relatively big impact.

both on prices and on production.

On prices, there's a lot of risk for production.

Stocks are relatively tight, both in the United States.

- Not quite as tight around the world, but there is tight stocks, and when we can't get our wheat planted and if we can't get it raised, it's gonna, it's impacting prices, and I think it's keeping prices up a little bit.

It's also impacting the planting decisions.

Do farmers wanna dust it in or do they wanna wait on the rain?

I think it's extremely important that they check with their crop insurance agent to look at that final planting date and what the consequences are of not planting versus planting.

- You've talked about the Russia-Ukraine war being really the biggest factor that's impacting the market.

How so?

- There's a lot going on there.

I think that one thing we've got to look it is the point of view of Ukraine.

Right now they've been taking back territory that they'd lost.

Ukraine basically feels if they don't take all of that land that they've lost to Russia, even what they lost in 2014, it's gonna create problems in the future.

You look at Russia politically, Putin can't allow Ukraine to take that land back or to give up what they've already already gotten.

So you got the Russian people on the one hand that are getting concerned about the war and you got Putin that if he loses that territory, he's gonna lose his job.

So there's a lot going on there and it's impacting our markets and our prices.

- What are your thoughts related to prices and then making production decisions?

- Well, I think as you're looking at prices, they're relatively good, and if you look over all on the market, the input cost and the prices right now, $9 wheat, your cost of production is probably around $7.75.

So it's offering you a profit and it'd be good to forward contract that.

However, you can't because you don't know how much production you're gonna have.

It may be from zero to above average yields.

That wheat is a marvelous plant.

So it's got a potential to impact prices over the long run.

Prices could be as low as six at harvest or as high as 13.

So it's just making decisions for producers tough.

- Kim, last but not least, is there any good news to report today?

- I think there is some good news.

I think it's good news that the markets offered a profit and the odds are that profit's gonna hold through harvest.

You look at the inputs that we've gotta have, fertilizer, chemicals, fuel.

Yes, those prices are relatively high, but they are available if we need them and most producers have crop insurance.

If they can't get it planted or if they have a crop failure, they've got a a backstop.

They got some protection there with the crop insurance.

And finally, it will rain.

We just don't know when, but it will rain.

- Alrighty Kim, thanks a lot.

We'll see you next week.

(upbeat music) - Today, I thought I'd share a little bit of information about capsaicinoids, the chemicals that make chili peppers spicy.

Chili peppers are thought to have originated in Central or South America, though today they're grown throughout the world.

The pungent burning sensation that you get when eating chili peppers is due to a class of compounds known as capsaicinoids.

It's thought that they're produced as deterrents against certain mammals and fungi.

Birds, however, lack the metabolic pathway to taste capsaicinoids, making them immune to the burning sensation.

This just so happens to make birds a very good way to disperse pepper seeds in nature.

The spiciness of different peppers is sometimes measured using the Scoville scale, which is named after its creator, American pharmacist Wilbur Scoville, who developed the scale in 1912.

In order to determine where a particular pepper falls on the scale, a known weight of the dried pepper is dissolved in alcohol to extract the capsaicinoids and then diluted in a solution of sugar water.

The sample is tasted and then subsequently diluted until heat can no longer be detected.

A single dilution is called a Scoville heat unit.

Bell peppers have a score of zero Scoville heat units.

Jalapeno peppers have a score of 2,000 to 8,000 Scoville heat units, while the Carolina Reaper has a score of over 1.5 million Scoville heat units.

In addition to making foods flavorful, capsaicinoids also have medicinal uses.

In particular, they're used in drugs to treat certain types of pain known as neuralgia.

They're also used to relieve minor pain associated with rheumatoid arthritis and muscle spasms.

So just a little bit of information if you were curious about what made chili pepper spicy.

For more information, please visit sunup.okstate.edu or food.okstate.edu.

- Finally, today, we're taking a look back at a SUNUP favorite.

Featuring the furry protector of the planes.

Here's SUNUP's Kurtis Hair.

- [Kurtis] From a distance, it appears there's an extra furry goat in the herd, but after a closer look, you'll see it's an animal that's been used to protect livestock for over a thousand years, a dog.

- So they're Akbash, it's a pretty new dog.

It's from the country of Turkey.

Well, when I say guard dog for goats or sheep a lot of people are gonna think Great Pyrenees.

They're still big white dogs, they just don't have that really long hair coat.

- [Kurtis] Cooper Sherrill is an Oklahoma State extension research assistant and is overseeing a study looking into the movements between guard dogs and their herd.

Using GPS tracking on both the dogs and the goats.

Cooper says, giving Oklahoma livestock producers a full picture on these guardians of the prairie is the ultimate goal.

- So as the sheep and goat industry continues to grow, I think there's gonna be a need for even more guard dogs in the future, obviously.

And, you know, the people of Oklahoma need to have some science behind what they're trying to implement out in their pastures.

- While this research is exciting, these OSU guard dogs are actually a small part of a larger study.

Extension researchers from OSU, Texas A&M and the University of Nebraska are collaborating to study a two-pronged approach in controlling woody plant encroachment in the Southern Great Plains.

The approach, patch burning and grazing goats in the pasture.

- And with that two-pronged system, we've got both the fire and the goats.

And, you know, to have the goats, we got to have the dogs.

The dogs allow me to go to sleep better at night.

So before we brought in the goats, predators were not a problem out here with the cattle.

Every once in a while you'd see a coyote near a new calf that had been born.

But now that we have such smaller animals, you know, they're not as intimidating to a coyote - [Kurtis] Cooper says, the research team tried using donkeys to protect the goats at first, but still lost several kits to coyotes during the kidding season.

Oklahoma Extension wildlife specialist, Dwayne Elmore says, having a coyote problem is not uncommon In Oklahoma.

- The primary predator that's gonna be a problem with livestock is coyotes.

They're very widespread and abundant, so almost all the predation that we see on livestock is due to coyotes.

So goats and sheep are particularly susceptible, and obviously, poultry as well, you know, so smaller animals, but, you know, newborn calves are at risk, particularly if the cow is not very protective.

- [Kurtis] Tall fencing and lethal measures are popular methods in controlling coyotes, but both can be counterproductive, especially killing the animal.

- These coyotes have territories and they're defended territories, so when you take a coyote out, it's usually a vacuum that's filled in quickly and sometimes by more coyotes.

So you might actually increase your predation problems.

But often, you know, if you're in an area where there's a lot of dogs that are roaming free, domestic dogs that are roaming free, and, or feral dogs that are being dumped, that might be your bigger problem.

And they might not even be killing the livestock, but just the constant harassment, and barking, and chasing them in defenses.

So, you know, a good guard dog is gonna spend all its time right with the herd and it's wary and on guard for other, you know, canids, coyotes that might come around.

- Since we've got the dogs out here working with the goats, we haven't had any losses.

- Guard dogs can be a great asset to a sheep and goat operation, but you can't just throw any old dog out in the pasture and expect good results.

The type of breed and bonding the animals to the herd are critical factors.

- A lot of the whole guard dog thing starts when they're a puppy.

From about 8 weeks to about 20 weeks old.

That's a really critical period in getting them bonded to your livestock, and set up in your area.

- [Kurtis] Once the herd recognizes the dog is a protector, that bond is as strong as a rusted bolt and a strip nut.

Wherever the dog goes, the goats go.

- You know, there are some drawbacks to having guard dogs.

It's an initial expense, and, you know, they take veterinary care and there's a risk that, you know, they might injure someone's pet that comes too close to the livestock, but they're highly effective at protecting livestock if they're trained.

- [Kurtis] The guard dog study in the Prairie Project will continue for the next few years, and the pups will keep doing what they're doing.

Standing watch, wary and ready, but the goats falling closely behind.

In Payne County, I'm Kurtis Hair.

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

A reminder, you can see SUNUP any time on our website, and also follow us on YouTube and social media.

I'm Lyndall Stout, have a great week everyone, and remember, Oklahoma Agriculture starts at SUNUP.

(upbeat music continues) (upbeat music fading)