 Welcome to our August Navigating Drought webinar. So today I am actually joining you from home because I'm not feeling well, so we have some other people filling in in the studio. Before we get started, just a couple of housekeeping items is that this is recorded. Recordings can be found on the NDSU Extension Drought page and there's a YouTube playlist that has all of our drought related videos on it. If you do have any questions, please put them in the Q&A so they're easier for us to find and we'll make sure that they get sent to the appropriate panelists or directed toward them and answer them as we go on. If you want to chat amongst yourselves or your technical issues, you wanna let us know. For just the panelists, select in the chat, host and panelists, and if you want everybody to see it, you can check, select everyone, our panelists and all attendees. With that, I'll introduce myself. I'm Miranda Meehan, the NDSU Extension, Livestock Environmental Stewardship Specialist and then I'll throw it over to the studio where we have Carl and Jerry. Good afternoon, welcome. I'm Carl Hoppe, I'm the Extension Livestock Specialist here at the Carrington Research Extension Center. I'm Jerry Stockholm, the Extension Veterinarian and Livestock Stewardship Specialist and next will be Adnan. Do you like this? Adnan accused, I am the North Dakota State Climatologist and Professor of Climatological Practices at NDSU, the main campus in Fargo. Good afternoon, everyone, I'm Zach Carlson. I'm the Extension Beef Cattle Specialist and I'm based on campus here in Fargo. Is Lisa with us today? Good afternoon, everyone. Lisa Peterson, Extension Livestock Specialist at the Central Grasslands Research Extension Center near Streeter, thank you. And Jana? Hi, everybody, Jana Block, Livestock Specialist based out of the Heddinger Research Extension Center. And then we have Sean Brotherson. Hi, Sean Brotherson, Family Livestock Specialist with Extension based out of the campus at NDSU in Fargo. Thank you, and again, welcome to our Naviting Grout webinar here this afternoon. We're gonna start today's discussion with a drought update, not looked from Adnan Coos, following which will visit about implications to our ranching community and answer your questions. Thank you to everyone that submitted questions during registration. If you have any additional questions, please bill free to put that in the chat box. So with that, we'll start on with our 10 minute drought update from Adnan. Good afternoon, everyone. I hope you can see my screen and you can hear me still. This is the drought update updated today. And the first slide is going to be the National Drought Mitigation Center's publication, U.S. Drought Monitor that was published this morning, 8 a.m. On the left-hand side, you're looking at drought monitor colors, darkest colors, the maroon colors that indicating exceptional drought. We have some improvements in the northern extent of the D4 this week, but at the same time, you're looking at the D4 coverage from the entire country to see where we stand with respect to the larger picture. And perhaps that would help us to be looking at the four-week change. And you're noticing that one to two category improvements in the Southwestern portions of the state to incorporate that monsoon rainfall, Arizona and New Mexico have been receiving. So the next slide is going to be the July. This is the latest, the month that was completed. And the August is going to be published on the 10th of the following month, which is going to be in September. But unfortunately, July was exceptionally dry. And in fact, it was the ninth-driest month on the ranking of the 127 years. At the same time, it was the third warmest month. And of course, when you have a warmer and the drier condition, that sets up very disadvantageous conditions for the drought to persist. The next slide is going to be focusing into your county and you're looking at particular counties. All the first that you see over here is the driest months for the duration of the 127 years. So it is a long-term to be dry. And at the same time, the temperature data is showing the 125th, for example, is the third warmest month in record that was 127 years. Looking at a little longer term, this is the nine months. The entire state is the second driest and the ninth warmest. And you're focusing into your individual counties and wherever you are. And you're focusing on the driest counties. And again, the first is the driest in that category during the 126 years. This time it is 126 because nine month periods was exist at that time. Looking at individual cities and Bismarck on the left and the Williston on the right-hand side, focusing on the green accumulation since April 1st, which is the beginning of the growing season. The closer it is to that red line, which is the driest period, or further away from that brown color that is the normal accumulation that the worst conditions it is. And in fact, it is the seventh driest period since 1873 for Bismarck. And for Williston, it is not as bad. It is still the 31st driest since 1893. The next slide is the Fargo on the left and the Grand Forks on the right-hand side. The same kind of interpretation. The green colors are indicating current accumulation. And the Fargo is checking in with the 11th driest since 1881. And Grand Forks ranking is the 19th driest in 1892. Next slide is going to take me to 30-day accumulation. This is the actual amounts. On the left-hand side, you see some, the Bullseye in the North Central location, precipitation reaching in excess of six inches. And what would that equivalent to in terms of the percent of normal? All these numbers that are greater than 100 meaning that the above normal precipitation, 230 means 2.3 times as much precipitation falling in this part of the world during the last 30-day period. If I extend the date to a 60-day prior to yesterday, I will still see some above normal precipitation. You have to keep in mind that the main reason is that this is not the 60-day period that was above normal, but during the past 30-day period, especially during last week prior to yesterday, we had some heavy precipitation amount that skewed that numbers even in the last 90-day period. All these 100% is the near normal condition that really doesn't mean near normal condition persisted equally during the last 90-day period. So it might be a little misleading for someone who is not really familiar with the precipitation regime that fell in North Dakota. For example, for someone who is sitting in his office away from North Dakota might look at the six-month precipitation and looking at that above normal precipitation might be under the impression that the North Dakota should not be trouble with drought. However, it requires for us to document the drought impact that is coming from each corners of the state documented by the county agents. And your input is very important in terms of depicting the drought conditions more accurately. So looking at this morning publication for North Dakota, D4 is still 13% of the state is being covered, which is 3% lesser than the last week. And same thing again, the extreme drought conditions 73%. And it still is the largest extent this season compared to a period since 2000, 2% improvements and still 100% of the state is some kind of drought that is 672 plus thousand people which is the entire population being under drought. Next slide is going to tell me the drought severity and the coverage, how much of that severity is covered by the area. This is one composite number 386, which is a four point improvements compared to last week. However, you have to keep in mind it still is greater than the index in 2017 and even 2006. If I wanted to get some idea about the accumulated impact, I need to calculate the area underneath this curve. And this is exactly what the next slide is going to show me. The number 15,818 really doesn't mean anything itself, but it helps me to compare that number with the previous drought in 2017, 2012 and 2008. And it is much greater than those numbers. The only number that is not greater is the 2002, 2006 drought. You have to keep in mind that that drought was elongated a longer period of time. However, the intensity of that drought is not as high as it is today. So this year's drought started being compared by the previous drought in 2019, 80s, and 1950s and 1930s drought. It is very much comparable. However, when you look at the drought conditions in a longer period of time, for example, over a 24 month, the period, you will notice that this year's drought is a little sliver at the end of this line, which is not as bad as some of the droughts in 1930s and 1980s, but you have to keep in mind those droughts were mega drought years. And of course the impact is going to be much accumulated. So looking at the soil moisture conditions, the map on the left-hand side is showing a surface layer which is going to react much faster to the last week's precipitation. In fact, indeed it did. North Central North Dakota is looking above normal soil moisture condition, which is perfect news. Even in the deeper soil profile to three feet. And again, this is a model, it might be incorrect, but the models are predicting excess moisture above normal moisture. You have to keep in mind, this is the ranking percentile that considers this time of the year only. And you have to keep in mind this time of the year the soil moisture is expected to be low. So any additional moisture is going to take no time to show that it is above normal precipitation or soil moisture. Looking at the satellite photo, and satellites do not lie because they take a picture of your crop and compares it with the near normal conditions. All these dark areas accumulated in northern plains, especially eastern portions of the state is shoving stress much more than any other states in the United States. And if you wanted to focus in North Dakota, the map on the right hand side is showing the severe drought. This is not the same scale as the drought monitor. So severe drought is being progressed by the picture that the satellite state on the latest picture was taken on August 22nd. Next slide is going to tell me to outlooks. This is the slides that you were looking for. Past week, we were very wet, the one week period. And fortunately, the period gone into September 2 is a wet period too. All these colors between light color, blue colors to a darker blue colors and yellow colors indicating between 0.5 to 1.75 inches of rain. It is above normal for a week period. This is a great news. And also it is coupled with cooler than normal conditions. We got into this cooler conditions last week and it looks like the models are showing the cooler than normal conditions will progress even into the second week. Here on the left hand side, the climate prediction center looking at that persistence and predicting 40% chance of being above normal precipitation. So the wet period will extend into September 8. And temperature-wise, cooler than normal conditions will stay cooler, especially in the northwest and portion of the state, but the rest of the state is looking for near normal conditions. This is week three and four that is going to take us into a period from September 4 to 17, 55% chance of having weather than normal. So this is great news. We started getting into this wet period since last week and the persistence is gonna take us into the week three and four and unfortunately, the temperature is showing very much likelihood of having above normal temperatures and this might break the progress of the weather conditions. And if I move into the next month period, you have to keep in mind that map is updated August 19, that is going to change. It is going to take into account the wet period that we started getting in last week. So the progress and the persistence is going to be applied to the next update of the three next month period. The same thing in the three month period. This is September 2, November, meteorological fall periods. This is left over from the previous period that before the wet period started still shoving below normal precipitation and above normal temperatures. I think that map is going to also change. So that concludes my presentation. With that good news, I'm gonna stop with sharing the presentation. Back to you Carl. Thank you, Adnan. I certainly appreciate that update of knowing that some of the precipitation has fallen and things still are kind of stressful out there when it comes to moisture. And that's where I'd like to talk to Sean Brotherson a little bit on the amount of drought and stress that's been in our ranching communities. Sean, could you share with us what resources are available to manage stress? Yeah, thanks for asking that question. And I'll preface reference to specific resources just by making a comment that probably the most important resource that any of us relies on every day in managing stress is our own health. Health is really important to our resilience, our ability to handle stressful conditions and resilience is really about being able to kind of handle difficulty and being able to bounce back from it. So I'd say of all the resources, the most important is your health. So you need to invest time in your own physical health and your own mental health. And there's a lot of resources available to help with that. I would encourage people to begin with a visit with their primary care provider or healthcare provider if it's accessible to them. So they can kind of get a baseline assessment of both their physical and their mental health just know where they are and then get some strategies and collaboration with a care provider as to maybe some specific options for them from proving their health. Specifically with regard to farm stress and some of the things happening there, NDSU Extension has a really good farm stress webpage with a variety of resources on there. So I'd encourage you to just Google NDSU Farm Stress. You'll find our webpage very easily. There's also a drought stress page which links people specifically to some of the drought relief programs that are available, different government programs like the livestock forage program, some of the water conservation programs. So I would, you know, when you're thinking about managing your operation, you wanna look at those drought relief programs specifically. When you're thinking about managing your own stress and health, you wanna think about some of these other farm stress resources. I'm a couple other online resources that are really useful. The North Central Region together has put together an online farm and ranch stress assistance center. It's just www.farmstress.org. It's specific resources from across our North Central Region, Minnesota, South Dakota, Iowa, Kansas, other states that have also contributed a lot of very helpful resources for managing stress. A couple others that I will mention here in the state, if you feel like you would benefit, I'm just from talking to someone or counseling resources, together counseling has a farm to farm counseling program. It's telehealth. They can talk to you in the cab of your vehicle, at your kitchen table. These are counselors who have farm backgrounds. They're involved in farming themselves often. And that's a resource that currently, if you have a difficulty with a cost of covering the payment, those costs can be covered for free. So I would pay attention to that, share that as a resource. And then maybe a couple of other things. New Zealand actually has a great farm health, farmer and mental health program called Farm Strong New Zealand, with lots of stuff from farmers themselves about what they do to maintain strong mental and physical health in farming. So you can look up Farm Strong New Zealand. And then the Red River Farm Network has a great podcast series called the Transformation Podcast Series, where they have podcast episodes with farmers, ranchers and family members from across our region about dealing with issues of stress and health and ag. So all of those are really great resources that folks can access. Well, what steps should someone take if they're concerned about an individual that's in a high stress situation? Maybe you can explain to me what a high stress situation is. Yeah, I think a high stress situation is if you see signs that you think someone maybe isn't managing well with ongoing or accumulated stress. You see that they're not showing up to regular social activities. You see that they're dealing with maybe increased physical health concerns. They're talking about dealing with sleep issues, digestive issues, lots of fatigue. So you're hearing them talk about kind of physical signs of stress. Or you notice that they seem to be down persistently, that they seem depressed, anxious about making decisions. I'm really irritable. So these are just signs that you say, okay, the stress that's accumulating in the life of this person I know is my neighbor or someone I care about. Seems to be piling up to a degree that it's really affecting their health and their functioning. So the first thing that you wanna do, just reach out, ask if they're okay. Ask them to tell you how are they feeling? What are some of the signs that they're experiencing that you feel like, hey, you're feeling overloaded, burdened, stressed, things like that. You just wanna listen. You don't have to fix it for them. You don't have to feel like you need to be a counselor. But you can be the bridge to help get them connected with resources for their health, whether that's their physical health or their mental health. So really, you just wanna be a good listening ear. Listen to what they have to say and then connect them with resources that you think might be valuable. If you think it's a situation where you're concerned that there's a depression level so intense that they might do harm to themselves, then you wanna say, hey, let me get you connected with some resources that can help you. In our state, just call 211. And the first link is the organization handles kind of crisis line calls and they can handle suicide intervention. They can handle just referral to sources of support in your area. They also do, they do a lot of referrals for different kinds of services. So 211 is a great number to have handy and just call on someone's behalf if you feel like it's kind of a crisis situation. You might have answered this already but let me just ask again, why is it important that we manage stress levels? Well, because there's a lot of, I mentioned earlier that I think health is a really important resource. In fact, I would make the argument that it's probably the most important resource you have on your pharma ranch operation. We don't necessarily list it like property or equipment or seed or things like that. You know, when we list our pharma ranch assets but it's really that asset that you rely on all the time to be able to function on your operation, be able to make decisions. And when you have high stress levels that really affects your decision making, obviously people are making lots of tough decisions right now, you know, like what am I gonna do for sources of water? What should I do with my cattle and do I need to sell some off? You know, where am I with weaning my calves? You know, obviously you're looking at crops. Where am I gonna get forage or things like that? So people are facing a lot of intense decisions that they may not normally have to make. And so you rely on good mental health, good judgment, being able to kind of handle the emotions of going through difficult decisions to be able to operate in that environment. And so your health is really important to that. And so you don't want your stress levels to go get so high that they overwhelm your health and make it really difficult for you to function and make those decisions. So taking care of your health and the health of people around you is really important. Thank you, Sean, appreciate it. You bet. You're very good, thanks Sean. So Miranda, we know that water availability is an issue this year. You look at dugouts and even streams and that sort of thing that we've been counting on for water are not available this year, but what about water quality? That's always a concern throughout the grazing season. Are you noticing any trends with water quality? Yeah, I would say nothing's really changed in terms of water quality. The results that have been being turned in for August are very similar to July. Definitely still seeing those high total dissolved solids, high sulfates reports of those impacts of high sulfates such as the blindness, some cases of bovine polio. And I know you're hearing about those too. And also the cyanobacteria, it's actually, there's been an uptick in August, I would say, if anything. And so definitely continue to watch that, obviously with the cool weather. That's gonna help the cyanobacteria and reduce the chances of that. But I know that we've had reports and that people are with the recent rains, dugouts are being replenished, which is fantastic. But we still wanna be cautious because it's likely not enough to improve that water quality in those dugouts. And so just check those sources, continue to check those sources, reach out to your extension agents, then they can come out and do a screening for you or you can bring a water sample to them for them to screen. It's always air on the side of caution. We don't need to lose any more animals than we already have in the state. And so just continue to monitor those sources. Thanks Miranda, another thing to, even those with tanks, with pipes, you have to monitor them almost every day because things go wrong, the float stick, something happens, you got tanks running over or tanks are dry. And so even those people with tanks have to be very, very diligent in monitoring water supply. Miranda, I also know that you're pretty much up to speed on what's available to producers in terms of assistance programs with water quality concerns. Yeah, so there's several programs available right now. It depends. There's some of them are restricted to certain counties. So I'll start with the FSA programs. So through FSA, the one for water hauling is called it's the emergency livestock assistance program or ELAP, and that is keep your receipts and they'll cover it's up to 75% of costs incurred for water hauling. Similar, the state also now has a water hauling program that it's through the Department of Ag, it's called the livestock, let's see, livestock water supply program that they just started accepting applications for that. It is capped at $4,500 per operation, but you can apply for that and still be eligible to get funds through the ELAP program. They would just deduct the amount that you got through the state program because if you've been hauling water all summer, it's likely that you've exceeded that 4,500 pretty easily, especially knowing that the state program will cover things like tanks and infrastructure needed to haul that water as well. But just keep your receipts, keep track of those. The other programs then is through FSA, there are two counties right now that are eligible for the emergency conservation program or ECP, and that is Ward County, which their application period actually closed. I know they're hoping to extend that, they haven't received confirmation. The other one that is eligible, I believe is MN's County. So check with your FSA office, see what's available through there. And that will cover up to 75% of the infrastructure to install water and other things potentially. And then the State Department of Water Resources, formerly the State Water Commission, also has a livestock disaster water supply program in which they help put in some infrastructure. It covers up to $4,500 per project and up to three projects on a particular ranch. That's another one that's been very popular. Lots of funds have gone out through that program and they still have $1.5 million available for that program. So definitely think about that program as well. Very good, thank you so much, Miranda. Jerry, I've got to ask you, sometimes around these water ponds, we see some dead animals nearby. And we've been talking a lot about blue-green algae and cyanobacteria and that possibly causing deaths, but could there be other things that are causing deaths like anthrax? Can you talk a little bit about that? Yeah, we sure can. So anytime you find a dead animal, the first concern is what's going on, why did this animal die and will I have more of the die from the same reason? So in certain parts of the state, there is a more of a risk of cattle meeting up with these little anthrax eggs, we call them spores and they're very hardy. They lost a long time in the environment and the drier it becomes, the more cattle graze closer to the ground, have a more of a risk of picking up some of these spores. And so where there's been anthrax before that have killed cattle, those spores are gonna be in the environment. And so as far as I know, there's at least one case in Kitter County that I don't know how many animals were involved but they've had a positive identification of anthrax. And when animals get sick with anthrax, whether it's oral or could even be aerosol, but almost always oral, death is pretty certain and pretty quick and the animals blow it up really rapidly. And if you have one or two animals in an area where they've had anthrax before it can be very suspicious that it is anthrax, call your veterinarian, the veterinarian may choose not to do a full necropsy because when they do a full necropsy that actually releases more of these spores or eggs back into the environment. He may elect to just take a blood sample in which they just look for the organism itself in the blood and confirm that diagnosis. Remember though, it can be other things as well. Miranda alluded to water quality, even high sulfates can produce cattle that have too much hydrogen sulfide gas and they die from that, could even be lightning. We've actually, believe it or not, had lightning the last few days so lightning strikes can kill animals too. So anthrax is always in the rule out list, especially in areas that have had it before but it's a concern and there is vaccines available for anthrax, we've had them for a number of years and actually they seem to be highly effective at preventing the disease. Should we be rounding up our cows and vaccinating for anthrax? Or is that something we should have done last year? Is it something in your community you should know what's going on? Yeah, great question, Carl. So if I have a neighbor that's had cattle lost from anthrax and I'm in the same drainage waterway so to speak and if I'm downstream, I'm probably becoming very concerned and they round up my cattle and actually vaccinate. Other than that, I don't pretend to tell people, other areas just go ahead and vaccinate. That's really a conversation with you and your veterinarian because the anthrax vaccine is actually a vaccine that can only be distributed to veterinarians for use in some of these herds that are at high risk. We just talked about stress. Anthrax, is that something a producer could get? Is that something I should have stress over? Or how do we? Actually, that's true. So anthrax is one of those communicable diseases. It's not gonna necessarily spread from cattle to human beings but human beings can catch it. Can be arousal, those spores can be aerosolized. You can take it in your lungs. There's even a form called cutaneous anthrax which is where you get anthrax in your skin. So it is one of those zoonotic diseases but you're not necessarily picking it up from an animal. You're picking it up wherever those spores are. So yeah, it's always something to think about. Another species are susceptible as well. So if you have a dead cow out there, what should we do? Call her veterinarian? Yes. Definitely don't move it. Yes, don't skid it around unless you're sure it's, if it's skin and bones and it died, it's probably not anthrax. So yeah, if you've got one, a couple animals just with no other reason that you can think of, call your veterinarian anyway. Have them come out and just take a look at the situation. If it's an animal that you knew died within just a few hours and it's bloated up already, be suspicious it might be anthrax. And if all things, at least ask him how your veterinarian's day is going. He might be stressed out as well. Yeah, that's right. Appreciate that. Janna, let's move to you. And water might kill our animals but appears some of our feeds might as well. How about nitrate poisoning? That's a potential concern. He could discuss what plants might be at highest risk for accumulating nitrates and what should we do? Yeah, our agents have definitely been busy around the state this summer doing lots of testing. So the challenge in a drought year is that we have a higher potential of some of these things accumulating and causing toxicity than we put in a normal year. Nitrate toxicity is a potential anytime actually but we tend to associate it with drought. So some of the crops that are nitrate accumulators are small grains, so barley, wheat, oats, that kind of thing. It can be also present in corn, millet, the sorghum sedan and the hybrids. Most of the time out on rangeland or pasture we're not gonna have a problem unless we have not a lot of forage but some nitrate accumulating weeds. And so those would include kosha, lambsquarter, pigweed, nightshades, Canada and Russian thistles. So those are kind of the common crops that we're looking at as far as a risk. We'd like to have Jerry talk to us a little bit about nitrate poisoning risks. What are the signs in animals? Well, so it's probably helpful to understand what happens in the animal. When nitrates are in the feed and the thing that happens within the animal is that it doesn't carry oxygen in the blood very well. So you have an animal that's inoxic so to speak in other words it's not getting enough oxygen and that can take place fairly quickly. Sometimes 48 hours or a little bit more after consuming plants that are high in nitrate can actually happen through the water as well. If somehow high nitrates are in the water the same thing can happen. So it happens fairly quickly. And I would say that the other thing that happens especially in pregnant animals is that the fetus is actually probably more susceptible to anoxia, not enough oxygen than the adult animal is. So you might see abortions in pregnant animals but you'll also see death in the adults as well if it's high enough. Did this explain some of the open cows this fall if we do PGN? Yeah, I mean, those are possibilities. If you're monitoring your cows fairly closely and you see abortions we always wanna know what caused it. And if you have an abortion storm nitrates could be one of those rule outs. Now it's a little bit hard to prove nitrate toxicity. Sometimes you can by looking at the blood it'll be a little bit chocolate brown. The best specimen to take is actually the eyeball where they can look for nitrates in the eyeball itself but that has to be done very quickly. The diagnostic lab tells me within 12 hours you have to have that eyeball into the diagnostic lab so they can actually test it. The other thing to think about too is that which animals might be at high risk? I guess my answer would be the hungry ones. So the lesson there is don't turn animals into places where you're either suspicious of high nitrates or you know that they're there. Make sure they go in there full so that they have less chance of consuming so much. How rapidly does nitrate poisoning, how quick does it onset? Well, I think I mentioned earlier maybe as quick as four to eight hours. It doesn't take that long for that transformation to take place and it's always dose related. The higher the dose the quicker the clinical science occur. So yeah, I guess the message again is test your feeds, right? So you know what you have and then make sure you don't turn animals into new feed stuffs in which they're already hungry. This just happened. I just did a call for a veterinarian last week where he lost nine cows. They were hungry cows. They turned them into the winter feeding grounds that had grown up with weeds and Jana mentioned the risk associated with that. Some of those nitrate accumulators are there and he had nine dead cows within the time span of a day. So be careful when you change feeds. Do it very carefully and make sure your cattle aren't too hungry. Thanks for the wise words. I'd like to move over to Zach Carlson and ask him Zach. Corn is a nitrate accumulating plant especially in the bottom third of the plant and we're looking to harvest it for forage just because of poor crop conditions and a lot of that corn can only be three, four feet tall maybe shorter. It might be in the same field but it's that short and it might be six, seven feet tall as well. So what options do we have for farmers that are gonna be harvesting this drought stressed corn? Yeah, I think the obvious options are you can ensile it and look at that or you can hang it. And those factors are really determined by what kind of, what are your time availabilities right now and into the fall here? What are your machinery options? What do you have access to or what do you have yourself? What kind of labor do you have so that you can put up good silage if that's the route you go? And then what's your end market? There's no need to be harvesting some of these water feeds, silages that is and then wanting to transport it long distances or considerations there. We don't wanna limit the amount of water we haul on roads is that's an added cost. And so kind of keeping those in mind that limits your options then to looking at as you alluded to, if we have some corn that's higher in nitrates, we know ensiling will reduce nitrates now by how much and of course proper fermentation is required for that but we know it can be somewhere between 25 to 50% or so. And that's only a guideline and we strongly encourage here an extension that you test these forages as Dr. Stuck has said and test them prior to feed out. So we know even if you have corn that goes in to make silage, test it prior to coming out of the bag or bunker into the feed bunk. So test it then and have a nitrate analysis there and that'll help you determine how to utilize that. So we're looking at silage as being that primary maybe use right now is these moistures and it's critical that you target that moisture range of 30 to 40% moisture is what you wanna have or excuse me dry matter. So 60 to 70% moisture and then kind of in these drought stressed fields with high variability and maybe limited grain fill, we still can expect relatively higher feeding values relative to normal corn silage. So maybe somewhere and that's gonna vary depending on how you put that silage up and lots of factors that contribute towards that but we can still expect it's a forage worth 70 to 90% of normal corn silage. So don't discount it simply because it's drought stricken. If you wanna look into haying, we've seen some of that already occurring. And of course, in that instance, capturing that corn prior to late maturity is gonna give you a higher quality. So considering things now, prior to have that field drying out and that's just going to give you a hay that may be closer to seven, 8% crude protein versus a mature stand of corn being maybe lower at five to 6% protein. So and of course, lower digestibility with that maturity. So taking into consideration, those of course target those haze to be about 15% moisture and then try to get those bales as tight as possible. When we talk about harvesting hay, tighten that bale tensioner as best you can to limit essentially what we deal with bale and crops is you end up creating a bale more susceptible to moisture and rainfall. So if you're not wanting to store these bales underneath some type of structure or covering them, try to get those as tight as possible to resist as much rain and spoilage through there. So those are kind of other options. I know one maybe a lot more uncommon but probably considered this year would be baledge and baledge simply put is corn silage but we're just not able to reduce that particle size and we're putting it up as a bale of course. And so your target moisture there is gonna be, you want that a little drier than corn silage. So somewhere in that 55 to 60% moisture and that's simply due to you're not gonna be able to get as tight of a pack on that as you can in your bunker or bay. And so keep that in mind. And people mentioned inoculants and things like that, baledge it's very hard to get that inoculant throughout that bale evenly. And so kind of keep those things in mind and expect that cost to be about maybe $20 to $30 more a bale for that for that baledge. And maybe a feeding value of about 80% corn silage. So there's a lot of factors that play into this but of course, as we said, get these forages not only tested for toxicity but also a nutritive value and that'll help you figure out when to best utilize these. Yeah, thanks Zach. So Carl, Zach mentioned silage. As an option for harvesting this drought stress corn. So what steps do producers need to take to make sure that they're putting up good corn silage to get it to ferment and have a high quality feed? I just love this question because it's the same issue every year. And that is getting enough the correct moisture content. Either we put it up too wet or we put it up too dry. This year people are talking about putting it up at 80% moisture and that's just too wet. That doesn't make good silage. It doesn't ferment that well. Different bacteria grow or yeast, fungi all grow at different moisture. So you'll get a different population growing and they just won't produce the right organic acids to pickle the silage pile. So if you can get it be at that 62 to 67% moisture that certainly works really well for making good silage. If you're getting a little bit wet in that at 70, 72 that might work. You see some seepage out of the pile but if you're up around 80% and that certainly was the case a few weeks ago you're gonna see a lot of moisture run out of the pile and probably have a funky smell of the pile as well. So that's the problem when we have it when we put it up too wet. Now the other key to putting up silage is gonna be pack it and then pack it and then pack it some more and put a lot of weight in your tractors. You don't want the dual, you know you're actually better off having a tractor without duals and a tractor with duals unless you're gonna put a lot of ballast on there. The heavier the tractor the better because you're gonna get a lot of more density. The goal is to squeeze the air out of the pile. So the quicker you can do that the better off, not only that if it's wetter you'll be a better job of squeezing the air out of the pile. So not too wet but just wet enough to make work. Now the next thing is additives like silage inoculants certainly do work. We add yeast to our bread to get it to rise, right? That kick starts the whole process. So we can do the same thing with silage piles and at a dollar to $3 per ton of feed. I always argue you're better, it's a good place to put some extra funds into it if you're trying to maintain the quality of your pile. There are some other things that aren't inoculants they're more like oxygen scavengers and they try to help kick start the pile in a different direction. So there's some products out there that do that. I'll always argue that putting a cover over your silage pile will be one of the better things you can do to a silage pile. And that's kind of far and few between the North Dakota. A lot of us tend not to want to do a pile but actually there's a two, put a membrane over our pile. There's actually a two membrane thing that you do. One membrane would exclude the, would keep the oxygen out of the pile and the other what we call black plastic would keep the water in the pile. So consider using those tarps that are two ply or some might even have two different tarps they put on. And then if your pile is too wet you can try to dry it out by adding any type of dry feed could be straw we've used wheat mids before. We've used hay, even alfalfa pellets, barley, malt, anything to dry out your silage. But realize on 15 ton of feed it takes about 1,000 pounds of straw to try to migrate that moisture down 5 percentage points. And by the same token, if you put up silage too dry, try to add water onto it. You can do that. I've been in a pile once where he raised the moisture content from 55 up to 65% moisture. It was a small pile of only 20 acres and he ran the garden hose for two weeks solid. It takes a lot of water and a lot of seepage to make a difference. So try to get it put up when the moisture content of the piles when the feed is right for silage. So that's the key. Very good. Thanks Carl. As one who drives a four wheel drive tractor with duals on in the silage pile, not with a bunker there's a level of comfort when there's duals on so you don't tip over. So there's food farm safety here too. A little bit of that stress comes back, right? That's right. So, Zach, if a farmer is looking to sell their corn to a livestock producer as feed, how do they determine the value of the crop? Now, would this question be corn silage or just the corn grain? Well, maybe both, Zach. Well, you can see the complexity already in this question, right? So it is, obviously there are a lot of factors that go into this and it's going to be different for everyone. Common practice for normal corn silage, if we look just right now at normal silage is to compare it as a, about seven to nine times corn price. Now, what is corn price? Is it today's corn price? No, because we're considering this as a, you know, this falls crop, right? So we need to think futures price. So we look into, you know, you can either go September or December futures and then you wanna account to get to your cash price using futures, you account for basis. That difference between cash and futures is called basis. And so most of North Dakota and Carl, you can correct me if I'm wrong is right around 40 cents. It might vary on your region, things like that. So I looked up today's price for September futures and we're at 544. And so if we account for basis, that gives us a current cash price for September of 504. Okay, we can use that, but what about the harvesting costs that are associated with taking the corn? Cause that's all built into corn price, but that's not built into silage price. So you want to then go in and account for those. Now, based on some of the literature that's looked into this, that varies just as much as anything else does, but let's just assume 45 cents. Okay, so 504 and then 45 cents for what is built into the corn price for harvesting, hauling, drying that corn and then losses associated with harvesting grain corn. So that gives us an in the field price right now based on that September future of $4 and 59 cents accounting for all that. So now we can use that price and use that estimated seven to nine times corn price. And that's gonna give you a more realistic approach of taking this year's corn crop even though we may be talking now, I haven't jumped into drought pricing yet, but just pricing regular corn silage. So you can take the complexities there or you can just simply go and take a third of whatever forage, primarily, hey, adequate, medium quality, hey, you can think about a third of that price. So whatever that is in your region, let's just say 120 bucks, that's just gonna give you a per ton basis and it's coming out of about $39 or so right now. So keep those things in mind. There's really lots of different ways. It's really all dependent on what you want to account for and really that's speaking on the basis of in the field. If you wanna go a step further, you're gonna have to start taking into account the removal of that residue and what that's worth. And that's probably somewhere in a dollar to $2 range. And then there's harvesting, hauling, and packing associated there. And so on a per ton basis, that may be somewhere between $10 and $12. And then don't forget storage and shrink. So again, it can be as simple as you wanna make it or it can be as complex almost as you wanna make it. So there is some tools we can use here. I've talked a little bit about that feeding value of drought stressed corn silage is somewhere between that 75 and 90% range. You get your silage tested for feeding value. You can really figure out what that value is relative to some normal corn silage or quote unquote normal corn silage or maybe you have some analyses from previous years on some more typical silage. And you can compare those to see kind of how they line up on digestibility and fiber content there and kind of use these numbers on that percentage basis then. So we, but we do have a corn silage decision tool. You can access that on NDSU extension develop that and it's available online. And that really just kind of factors in both that corn price as well as a hay price. And based on what you anticipate that grain fill to be in some of these poorer stands of corn. So Zach, we know that most producers this winter are gonna be short of feed and they're trying to, you'll see all sorts of forage being bailed from cat tails to completely mature CRP. And yet we're still gonna be short. So is there a mechanism that livestock or realize we all have neighbors we can check with our neighbors but we're probably in the same area and everybody's got the same problems. How do we connect some of our producers with those that might have feeds or have feed available at a certain price? How do we go about doing that? There are a couple of tools that we have in the state. One of those is through NDSU extension and that's the NDSU feed list. And it's free to use. And really it's generating that platform of communication between those that need feed and those that have some available. And so you can either post buying or selling whatever your needs are. And then you do have to list kind of some of your information whether a contact of some sorts whether that be a phone number or an email. So people can get a hold of you of course. And then your posts there will be up for 90 days. So if you utilize this and you wanna take your ad off once you've either sold or whatever you can go ahead though and contact the feed list coordinator and have your ad removed. So otherwise after 90 days it will automatically be removed. The other tool is through the Department of Agriculture here in North Dakota. And that's the hay hotline and interactive map with that. So there is an access that you can call in and post or have them post for you the same type of information but they have a little more they go a little further with an interactive map that you can actually click on and look at. And there people can post, you can post feed that you need, feed that you have and actually pasture as well in both those situations. And in addition to that people will that are willing to or able to compose donations and also people that can haul feed because it's one thing to get the feed but it's another to get it to you. And so there's also contact information for those that are willing to put it out there or if you are willing to go ahead and put your information out and you can be able to reach someone that will be able to bring that feed to you. And so that's open kind of during business hours to call in that is and get your information there but you can obviously leave a message with the Department of Agriculture as well. Very good Zach, thank you so much. So Miranda, some producers have been successful at establishing a crop-a-crop for grazing. I'm still wondering who that might be. We've gone through a summer that cover crops probably didn't thrive too well although lately with a little bit of moisture that's common somewhere ahead of the moisture I know there's been some cover crops put in. So maybe just address some of the concerns with some of these cover crops that people might not expect but may experience with some of them that become drought stressed or even some of them that were successful at establishing some of them what might be some of the toxic things that may show up? Yeah, so I know a few and we have a SARA project that we did some season long cover crops and so if people got those in the right time that they look okay with definitely not the production we seen a year ago but there's forage out there, there's feed available. Janna touched on some of these with the nitrate toxicity, the sorghum sedans and our small grains if you have oats in that mix, especially. The one thing that we tend to see in our cover crops that also accumulates nitrates is our brassicas and our animals tend to seek out the brassicas they're one of the things they like the best in those cover crop mixes so we wanna be really careful in testing those if we have those in that mix. The other thing also is that being aware of the risk for plastic acid with drought stress and also we are getting close to that time where we're gonna expect our first frost and so being sure we're testing those and we've seen on the research we've been doing all over the place, we've had ones that are perfectly acceptable, not a problem and some that are pretty high and we've decided not to do anything with them because it just between the level production and the nitrate levels it wasn't worth the effort and the risk and so that has a lot to do with just that cropping history of those fields as well. Did someone put fertilizer on when they planted their cover crop as a side dress that's gonna impact that as well? So what we've been testing the specific plants we know are nitrate accumulators and then also our sorghum sedans to have them tested for plastic acid before we put any animals out and that takes it's been about three to four days ahead of time getting out there clipping and getting something to the lab and some of them that were higher we waited retested because as those plants mature those levels go down and we've been able to utilize some of those a little later than we wanted but we're still getting on one of them we got 50 days of grazing for his herd which is a small herd but it's still some additional grazing days less pressure on those pastures. So just some things to think about when we're grazing with the feeds that potentially have nitrates is obviously always testing I don't think you're gonna find anyone extension that's not gonna tell you to test things and know what you have going on with your feeds but as they mature they go down and so you might have a lower risk then and also it would for grazing we wanna not stock as high and graze it as hard as we normally would leave a little bit more residue since the nitrates are at the bottom part of those plants and just knowing what you're dealing with is always the best rule with them with any drought stress crop. Very good thank you Miranda. So Zach back to you this is maybe just a little bit different question. So what some producers are trying to figure out to graze things that they normally wouldn't graze like hanging something that the crop has failed in they're just turning the cattle into it kind of like grazing corn or that or something that's been a failed crop even could be soybeans we had that going on last year if I remember right or other crop residues are there some risks that they need to think about before they turn the cattle in? Absolutely producers need to first check with their crop insurance agents and make sure that they're still going to qualify before they do anything to those failed crops and make sure that they're meeting all requirements on that side of things. The next thing would then be to check what pesticides did you apply to those fields and check the labels of those pesticides and making sure that you've meet the time interval associated after application of those. So both herbicide and insecticides and there's a great resource the North Dakota weed control guide that lists out the time intervals of a majority of herbicides. And so check your labels before going in. The other thing when we talk about grazing some of these crops Miranda highlighted a lot of the key points and really need to be aware as you also said Dr. Stucka that you're turning cattle out full. That's two to three days prior make sure they're full and providing as much fill them up on that on a forage and before we turn out. And then also when we talk about corn just cause it's maybe a little grain fill this year keep in mind the experience of the animals that you're turning out. So if it's cows that have been out on cornfields for the past several years or have experienced they're gonna go for that year first. And so just be aware of how much ear you have and try to manage that by fencing off sections or kind of moving cattle across that field more deliberately knowing that they'll be going after some of those years first as they tend to do. And so, but other considerations it looks like we're gonna have some moisture coming here be aware of how that moisture affects plants regrowth and things. So nitrates and plastic acid tend to be more concentrated following rain event. And so provide that a buffer zone of a week or 10 days, once we get through some of the regrowth after a rainfall and the same goes with frost make sure it's a hard frost before going out into some of those sorghum sedan hybrids and making sure you're aware of that. And if you're already out on some cover crop with some sorghum in there watch for those hard freezes and have a plan to move cattle off that area if you can. Again, we just have to provide a little bit of time before we go back in and graze those things. So I think maybe one last thing to mention that doesn't get discussed a whole lot is acute bovine pulmonary emphysema and edema. It's more commonly known as fog fever. And that could be something we look at this year as we move it occurs when you move cattle from a lower quality protein to a higher protein. So it's actually tripped the fan, the amino acid that gets converted in the rumen and is absorbed. And when it does that, the metabolite that it gets converted into it will actually affect the lungs. And it looks like pneumonia and you'll wanna treat it as such, but it isn't really something that you can treat from once you have it. So just be mindful of it. What it looks like is essentially like any other pneumonia it's associated with panting and then those animals may end up lying down and you're trying to get them up. So just be aware of that. Really best to control is understanding, we can start to feed some elevated levels of protein coming off these low quality pastures and kind of before we get into these cover crops. And so almost stepping them into that cover crop with some additional feed supplementation or you can kind of pull them off those cover crops and manage it that way. So just something to be aware of. Well, thank you, Zach. Now we're gonna move on to Jana and ask her a little bit about winter inventories for our feed. You know, as winter approaches right now are we gonna have enough feed for our cows? And how do we go about doing that, Jana? Figuring out how much feed you need. Can you talk about that? Yeah, so I know a lot of people are definitely in the boat of knowing that they don't have enough on hand. And they've probably this year have done an extraordinary job of keeping track of what they do have just because we know that we're short in a lot of areas. So the feed inventory part itself would just be, I mean, that's pretty simple. Most of the time as far as hay production goes you're gonna have a bale count in each field. And you do wanna kind of separate those out by lots. So same species, same field taken off in a 40 hour period. And that's just a way to kind of group your feeds and the species and the types of things that you're dealing with. If you're looking at silage or supplements basically all you wanna do is just come up with a weight of feed that you have on hand. And there's lots of ways to do this. There's lots of resources out there that can help you evaluate, you know how much silage in terms of pounds that your bunker is gonna have in it. You can use the good old pencil and paper system or there's lots of good really simple Excel based spreadsheets or things out there you just kind of have to hunt around. And of course, if you guys want more information about that, feel free to contact any of us and we can help you through that. So we've got to know weights. It's really also important to get a good estimate of the dry matter content because remember livestock feed requirements are based on dry matter because we're trying to take away that dilution content of the water. So you can do that at home. You can use a moisture tester or you can use the good old microwave method just be really careful if you don't burn up your microwave, if you're doing that you can also just send off a sample to a commercial lab and they'll give you a dry matter or moisture content. Go ahead and get like Zach mentioned earlier get your nutrient analysis done. It's gonna be really critical this year to know what we're dealing with in terms of quality so that we can feed those feeds to the appropriate class of cattle at the appropriate time. So once you have your inventory done the next step is to figure out what your livestock needs are gonna be for the fall and winter. So we need to get numbers and estimated weights for every class of livestock that you're going to be feeding. So our mature cows, our bulls, our heifers, our replacements, yearlings, calves, whatever you happen to have on hand. And then you can use kind of a ballpark of two and a half percent of body weight to figure out the amount of dry matter. Obviously that doesn't account for their actual nutrient requirements but it will tell you in terms of pounds what you might be short. And then using that nutrient analysis we can figure out where you're gonna be short in terms of actual protein or energy, things like that. So it sounds like kind of a complicated process but just a couple of basic steps. Like I said, lots of tools out there to do it. And I do think this is probably gonna be really critical to know and be really honest with yourself about what you're gonna be able to do with the feed you have on hand. Thanks, Jana. I certainly know that I've been doing my feed inventory is about on a twice a month basis trying to figure out just what it is we're gonna feed and how much feed we need for this winter. Because certainly if you wait until the middle of winter there may not be much feed to be found. Exactly. We've been talking about this for a while trying to figure out what you've got and what you might need for supplements so you can get some of that put in because it's definitely gonna be a competitive situation with everybody in the same boat. So. Thank you. Lisa, one option is to not feed our calves at home but our cattle, our cows or our calves at home would defend them out of state to be fed. Can you go through what steps we need to remember to do if we're gonna ship cattle out of state to be fed? Both cows and calves. Yeah, Carl. You know, I think in many situations we would normally say that it is probably cheaper to send your cattle out than try to haul feed to them. And so if that's an option for you or if you can find a place to do that some things that you need to do is remember that every time livestock either change hands ownership wise in the state of North Dakota and they need a brand inspection and likewise anytime they leave the state they need brand inspection. And so in the chat will come up a place where you can find those brand inspection requirements. Secondly, you're probably going to need some type of health certificate. So contact your local veterinarian and maybe it's depending where you're going as simple as just having a permit number for those animals but in other cases you may actually need a true health certificate that has each and every animal listed on that. And so it depends where you're going but you're assured coming back to North Dakota you will probably need a health certificate for that. And so those are two things that are required. I guess not to belabor the point very much but I always remind producers that good fences make good neighbors and good contracts make good business partners. And even if you're feeding your livestock with somebody you've known your whole life maybe it's a family member or a good friend whoever has something written down about the expectations, the payments who's going to do what some of the saddest calls I get are from producers who had a handshake deal that did not have anything written down and whether they're the people who are custom caring or feeding for livestock or they're the people whose livestock are being cared for they're not happy about what happened they're owed money or maybe they somebody thinks they owe more money and it's headed to litigation. And those things could have probably all been avoided if they would have had some good things written down. And so there are examples online I think the north central region of the ag economist folks, the ag business folks have some examples of those but get something written down. I know we like to work in a handshake world in agriculture but the worst records will beat the best memory in a court of law and I just don't want our producers to get themselves in a bind. Thank you, Lisa. Before we move on, I'd just like to make a comment about if you're experiencing some forage shortages and there are some assistance programs available if you haven't signed up for the livestock forages disaster program with the farm service agency by me all means please do that. And if we continue to have a little more D4 drought going on in the state there might be another payment identified do so. And then the other thing that just came out recently would be emergency loans that would be through the bank in North Dakota it's called the livestock drought loan program. So if you're looking for feed resources or I believe if you wish to purchase cattle back in the future after you've sold them these particular loans might be accessible. Of course to work with these loans you'd have to go to your local banker and then they've worked with the bank in North Dakota but at least those things are out there and people are thinking about them for you, Jerry. Yeah, thanks Carl. So Miranda this relates to next year or maybe the year after. So we're gonna, I shouldn't say all many will be guilty this year of overgrazing pastures it's all we had and they didn't grow back very well and so what's the consequences? What are some of the, I guess what are some of the steps to reduce overgrazing but what are the some of the consequences as well with overgrazing? Yeah, and you're correct. People just ran out of options this year I've seen a lot of pastures across the state and traveling that are overgrazed and it's gonna happen and our grasslands are resilient they can recover from that. It's the repeated overgrazing. So if we hit one or two pastures really hard this year we wanna make sure that we give them time to recover next year. However that might happen if it's delaying grazing or if it's using some annual forages but if we can try to delay that grazing on those pastures so a little later in the growing season so they can have some time to recover that's really the key is to build in that recovery into your grazing system. If we don't and we continue multiple back to back years of overgrazing which might have happened in some cases because last fall was dry too and some of our pastures got hit last fall pretty hard we're gonna see plants that we don't increase in plants that our livestock don't like on things like fringe sagewort, curly cup gum weed are gonna start coming into those pastures we're gonna see more bare ground on those pastures and so lower production also there's increased risk for insects and other pests to come in those pastures and further degrade the forage production. And so being aware of that also, if we look forward if we get out there too early or don't give it adequate time to recover we're gonna have reduced leaf area and so reduce potential for photosynthesis and plant growth next year. Yeah, that's right. I think many of us are in the same boat when it comes to pasture management this year we tried to move cows but the grass didn't ever come very well or was just wasn't much there there were still some in the lower areas and so yeah, we need to think about next year and what we can do to reduce pressure next year and maybe it's fewer cattle numbers maybe there's someplace else so all of those things need to come into consideration. If we look into next year another option I wanna especially with Adnan's positive report is that are relatively positive compared to what we've been hearing and outlook is that potential for getting an annual origin yet this year. So if you could get a winter cereal in that will help. So some of the options that we if depending on how you wanna use that winter cereal is if we're gonna graze that next year and delay grazing on some of our pastures looking at a winter rise probably your best bet there's some research that's been done at Central Grasslands looking at performance of those winter cereals and then also the economic ends of the end of things too. If we're looking for supplemental hay our winter wheat would be our best with some of our forage winter wheat varieties are our best option. And I know the links been dropped in the chat for that research but we have a really good opportunity to get some of those things growing for soil erosion purposes and then also for some supplemental feed in the spring. Yeah, thanks Miranda. That's actually a great topic or a great point to bring out because if you plant some of those small grain crops early on I mean they'll come up and you'll have forage available which will delay your introduction into your normal native pastures. So it's a great point and needs to be considered on some of this crop ground. So anyway, thank you so much again and thanks to all for joining us today. If you have any further discussions we're available or reach out to your local India SEO extensionators as well. The next webinar is scheduled for September 30th. I hope between now and then we have a lot of rainfall and we don't have to call it a drop webinar anymore. Thank you so much.