 Welcome to our July Navigating Drought webinar. Just a couple housekeeping items before we get started is we'll just introduce ourselves here. I'm Miranda Meehan, the livestock environmental stewardship specialist at NDSU Extension, as well as our disaster education coordinator. And here with me in Carrington at the Research Extension Center, I have Zach Carlson. Hi, I'm Zach. I am the Extension Beef Cattle Specialist located on the main campus in Fargo. And joining us remotely, we have the rest of our team. And so Adnan, do you want to introduce yourself, please? Yes. Good afternoon, everyone. This is Adnan Aqiz. I am the North Dakota State Climatologist and the Professor of Climatological Practices. I am located here in Fargo at NDSU campus. Kevin. Good afternoon. I'm Kevin Sadovic. I'm the Extension Rangeline Management Specialist on the main campus in Fargo and the Director for Central Grasslands Research Extension Center, located near Streeter. Carl. Good afternoon, everybody. I'm Carl Hoppe. I'm an Extension Livestock Specialist located here at the Carrington Research Extension Center. Lisa. Good afternoon, beautiful people. I'm Lisa Peterson. I'm the Extension Livestock Specialist at Central Grasslands Research Extension Center near Streeter. And Tim. Tim Petrie, Extension Livestock Marketing Economist, Berry Hall Downtown Campus of NDSU. That's our team today. And we might have Dr. Jerry Sucka joining us in a little bit, hopefully, our Extension veterinarian. So, unfortunately, we were hoping we wouldn't have to keep doing these meetings with you guys, but drought continues to progress in the state and expanding in severity, which I know Adnan's going to talk about, but currently 100% of the state is in drought. This morning, the US drought monitor published the map on the left hand side, which is showing the areas in drought. All the dark colors of red and maroon colors are indicating drought-stricken areas. And as you see, North Dakota is not the only state that has D4 or exceptional drought in the southwest and the Pacific Northwest is still suffering from the long-term drought that had been progressing for longer than two years, especially in the southwestern areas. The map on the right hand side is showing the four-week change. Green colors are indicating improvements. In North Dakota, you see some improvement that happened to accommodate the past, the precipitations during the past four and five-month period, and the orange colors and the yellow colors are indicating degradation or getting worse conditions. Looking at the past nine-month period starting from October through June, this coincidentally corresponds to the water year. You're looking at your counties and these are the rankings. Number one is showing the driest period on record during the past 126 years, so you're looking at the driest core areas in the long-term period. Map on the right hand side is showing, however, the temperature. Larger the numbers are, the warmer the temperatures are, 126 years on record, and closer to 126 tells you that how warm the county is. In overall, the state experienced the 10th warmest and the third driest nine-month period on record. These two graphics are showing one on the left-hand side of the past 30 days of precipitation. There are some hot spots in this area, especially in Ward County and Northern McLean County, receiving greater than three inches of rain. However, what it means on the right-hand side is the percent of normal of these precipitation, and that's the only area received near-normal precipitation, and rest of the other states did receive much drier conditions than the lesser than normal. And three means three percent of normal precipitation fell during that period of time, Southern Foster County and Northern Stotsman County. Increasing your time into 60-day period, that 30-day carries into the next 60-day and the 90-day period, and again the red colors are indicating drought-stricken locations. And as a result, in North Dakota, you're looking at the D4 or exceptional drought, 10% of the state is covered. And that is 2% increase compared to last week, and you will notice that all that increases from last week, 1% increase in D2 or severe drought, and 3% increase in D3 or extreme drought, and 100% of the state is experiencing some kind of drought, and that puts the entire population in drought. So what it means in the historical perspective, in one number, that is the Dwell Severeity and Coverage Index. And this year, this growing season, the DSEI or the Dwell Severeity and Coverage Index reached its highest intensity of 393 on record since 2000. And if I wanted to calculate the area underneath the curve, that drought index, and that's going to give me some kind of an indication of accumulated impact since the drought started right here in 2000. And Western North Dakota has been having some drought trouble since the earlier in 2000, and the number would be comparable to the previous drought since 2000. And that is the highest number so far since the drought of 2000 to 2006. The reason that I am doing this is to make some comparison between the previous drought in 2006. For example, in 1988, some economic impacts reaching to between $5 to $10 billion. This is an economic impact to North Dakota. However, if I wanted to go back into 1900 to compare the current drought to give some kind of a perspective of the previous drought, including 1930s, 1970s, and 1980s, this is the nine month standardized precipitation index. Currently, we are having negative 2.63. Look at some of these numbers in 1980s, negative 2.72, 1978, 1978. Some of these numbers are very much comparable to the current drought. So it is telling me that in short term, the magnitude of the drought is very much comparable to 1930s, 1950s, 1980s drought. However, if I wanted to go back and be comparable to 1930s, that lasted 11 years, 1950s, that lasted 6 years, and 1980s, that was a mega drought too. That little sliver on the right hand side is where we started in the long term period. So with the accumulated impact, we are still not there, but individual short term strikes, we are very much comparable to 1930s, 50s, and 80s droughts. Here's the surface soil moisture on the left hand side and the deep soil to three feet on the right hand side. All that dark colors are indicating very dry soil. And looking at the 90 day precipitation, standardized precipitation index, all that red colors are indicating severe drought. And looking at the vegetation drought response based on what the satellite see on the left hand side is the entire United States. And looking at that drought stricken states on the right hand side, North Dakota only. All that red colors are indicating severe drought based on what the vegetation is responding to that precipitation deficit and evaporation. I am going to skip that and go into the seven day outlook of map on the left hand side is indicating some green color. In August 5 and that precipitation is not much really it is not a drought buster. It is between 0.01 to 0.1 inch of rain. It is not much. Map on the right hand side is the seven day temperature departure from normal all these colors are indicating near warmer near normal to warmer than normal conditions into August 5. And at the second week between August 5 and 11 map on the right hand side is indicating that it is going to be another dry the week. And the temperature wise it is above normal or warmer than normal conditions, looking further into the future week three and four that's going to take us into the the rest of August. On the right hand side precipitation forecast is indicating drier and temperature on the right hand side is indicating warmer than normal conditions, looking at the entire August. Well that is the picture that we saw before, and looking further into the next three month period from August through October map on the left hand side is the precipitation. It is under a better chance of having drier than normal conditions, at the same time, the warmer than normal conditions, even further into the future, going into November. The same story is going to take place. So the question from the field might come, is there any climatological background that responsible for this ongoing drought, such as, is it climate change or is it El Nino Southern Oscillation. It is really nothing more than persisting drought itself, creating the drought conditions, and persisting into the future dry conditions persist and condition become drier in the future, because the soil does not have any any evaporation from the soil would have added moisture into the atmosphere which would become precipitation, but since the soil is so dry. It is not really contributing into the, the local moisture source, if I wanted to show you a map of upper air. So when you have a warmer conditions and the dryer conditions it creates a bubble of high pressure center that persist. Very persistently in that central United States, especially in North Dakota, that not only creates that warmer conditions persist, but also it deflects any incoming precipitation pattern elsewhere so this is really nothing more than persistence of dry conditions, creating any conditions further into the future, which we call a positive feedback. So that's all I have and and let me stop sharing and entertain any question that you may have. So we'll put those in the chat box and we'll, or the Q&A and we will make sure they get addressed as we move forward through our webinar today. So with water continuing to be an issue and a lot of our grazing systems, even water sources drying up, and we're having water quality issues, Miranda, have, has there been or you've been working on with extension agents across the state, screening livestock water sources, what are the trends you're seeing. We've screened about 1000 water sources now to date. I haven't looked at all the results, they're continuing to come in constantly. Our extension agents are very busy with that. But the general trend we've been seeing obviously is dry waters are drying up. And the water levels are decreasing as that happens the total dissolved solid sulfates that's salt and mineral component is becoming more concentrated so we are seeing an increase in in waters that are crossing that threshold and causing concerns for potential toxicity issues so greater than that 5000 parts per million and total dissolved solids, greater than 1000 parts per million and sulfates. And then we're seeing an increase in cyanobacteria blooms, and as a result, increased reports of lost livestock. I think the last time I checked about five counties have agents within them have had some type of report of livestock loss to some type of water quality concern whether that is blue green algae are sulfates or total dissolved solids. And the increase in cyanobacterial blooms. What steps. I see we have Dr stuck on here. Dr stuck can you tell us what steps should producers take they think they're having an active bloom. Yeah, thanks Zach. You know your your options are limited. You got one choice and that's to get the cattle out of there. I mean if you don't have water I don't care if you got forwards out there you don't have pasture. And so whether it's final bacteria and algae blooms or it's high TDS or high sulfates cattle can't be in there. You can start hauling water you if you can find a tank to buy you can start hauling water, but I always remind people that once you start hauling water. That's a full time job usually for one person. You have to be prepared to haul water, sometimes many times a day, depending on the size of your tank so there are no options except to provide better water or get the cattle out of the pasture. I'm going to mention a couple things on the cyanobacteria. And it's it's not the algae themselves that killed cattle it's the toxin that's produced. And there's two different types of toxin that have been identified and one is a neurotoxin and the other one is what we call he paddle toxin which is a liver toxin. Either one though will kill cattle and oftentimes in as little as 24 hours, and it is not just cattle. That gets exposed to that water that it's toxic to so if I had a stock pond. Waterhole tank whatever we want to call it. Let's get that off green color it's not it's not necessarily that it's toxic, but that's a sign or a symptom that you need to do something. And whether it's just getting cattle out of the pasture or making sure they can't get in that water. If they've got better water to drink that's what you need to do it becomes an emergency situation. And with that Miranda, what assistance programs are available to producers that are dealing with some of these water quality issues. Yeah there's a number of assistance programs available the state has the livestock disaster water supply project program which is administered by the State Water Commission, soon to be the Department of water resources as a Sunday I believe. And that program, it gives out $5,000 for water improvement projects. That's a stock tank a pipeline extension a well and per project that's a cat per project and then producers can apply for up to three projects. And so that's a really good resource has been a really quick turnaround I think there's been to date 84 projects that have been completed and and the producers have received the money for those projects as well. Other options. If you reach out to your local FSA office is elap. And that's the emergency livestock. And that's the assistance program, and that one provides assistance for water hauling. I know it's not that deal ideal but it is a way to get water to those animals and utilize forage that we may not have been able to utilize because of waters drying up or not being of good quality. And not everyone is available is eligible for this would be ECP program through FSA, which is the emergency conservation program. And I know Ward County was approved the deadline for that that actually just closed sign up was July 22. And I know there's a couple other counties that are in the process of a plot or getting approval for having that program activated within their projects. So just keep a lookout for that and it doesn't hurt to ask your local office to see if that's something they're considering. They do provide a little bit more money on those through that one. The other side of it though is that with a federal program you do have to go through some environmental compliance so it takes a little longer to get those programs in the ground but if you're looking long term any type of any way we can provide a more permanent better quality source of water. It's going to increase your drought resistance in the long term. So Kevin, kind of shifting from water to forge is there's a there's an increased risk for overgrazing this year given the reduced forage production on range and pastoral and what steps you do you recommend ranchers should be taking to reduce overgrazing. And that is going to be why is it important for them to minimize overgrazing this year. Sure. I mean I've driven across much of the state and it's probably the worst that I've seen in my career of overgrazed pastures, common throughout the state. Past droughts we'd see areas of the state overgrazed, but not other areas and this year seems to be common throughout the state and what what's been interesting as you see some areas that have gotten some rain, and the pastures are green, but they're still short. Just because the rains have come so late we don't get enough biomass growing we just get the green tissue growth, which is still better than nothing. And it's important for producers understand that overgrazing during this time of the year doesn't that doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be a long term detrimental effect, as long as those pastures can get some recovery coming into the fall. Now that's easier said than done because you just run out of the grass to go longer into the season, but a producers can can can give some of those passion that are overgrazed at this time of the year. So I'm recovering the fall so they come into the winter, at least with some growth and some some rebuilding of the carbohydrates and that root step structure that would definitely be a beneficial to those plant communities. Second is we get into the fall we're going to see we're still going to have to raise some pastures short it's just the way it's going to be when you have this kind of a severe drought. And so, what I've told producers is try to minimize that overgrazing event in the fall to one or two pastures versus all the pastures. It provides opportunity for 2022 to allow some recovery for those pastures that were overgrazing the fall to be deferred from grazing in the spring and even into the summer. So plan ahead to know if you're going to be short of pastures and you have to overgraze a pasture, know that that pasture needs time to recover in 2022 and try and give some of those pastures that were raised hard this spring and summer, some recovery this fall, just to minimize that long term damage. It's important, you know, our grasses are very resilient and they can take these time of events, it's the back to back years and so those pastures that are grays hard this year, they will need some time to recover in 22 and so plan for that within your strategies and hope we get some rain in the 2022 is a better year. So we can minimize that long term impact on our forges. And following that Zach we know the immediate response to to reduce forage demand on pastures has been to reduce either herd size or decrease the length of the grazing period. You have discussed early weaning as another option to reduce forage demand. Once producers have decided to early wean what steps should be taken to ensure those calves perform well. Yeah, absolutely. I think when you consider early weaning or have decided to go forward with it, you need to ensure that your facilities will meet the standards of these younger calves so whether that's bringing in an additional bunk line that might not cater to those 300 pound calves, or it's a water tank and we talk a lot already about hauling water but bringing in water until those calves can reach that cup. And so those first and foremost it's giving access to both water and feed, and then it becomes what the quality of both of those so ensuring that you have fresh water, cleaning those tanks to every two to three days, making sure that water cup is clean, and, and accessible for those calves as well as maybe positioning that water. In the beginning when those calves are first brought into those pens perpendicular alongside the fence line, that'll allow those calves to discover it because not only are you changing the location and separating them from from the cow you're putting them in a new place that might contain a different type of water source and what you're using on pasture. So be mindful of what water source you're using and how you can help train those calves. The next part then is diet and for for a lot of situations, these diets are going to be fairly expensive if you're going with the total mixed ration or commercial route and in both avenues work well because the most important component is to get these calves consuming feed right away in those first two weeks. And so to do that you want to minimize and have uniform diet so particle size if you're going to make your own diet needs to be fairly uniform across that'll help reduce the sourcing of those diets, and then you're going to want to condition the diet because more than likely, you're going to have some dryer feed components in there and so conditioning could be there with your protein source distillers grains, modified distillers or something what, or could be molasses or even water if need be just to keep the dust down reduce that dust so the, if you think about it the diet you're replacing with milk and in forage for those calves. You're going to gain about two to two and a half pounds a day so you need to replace that and expect that those type of gains with your diet and therefore you need to manage about a 16 to 18% protein fairly high protein, at least in that beginning first couple of weeks into the first week, and then high energy 70 75% TDN diet so that's kind of what you're looking at for a diet and it may be expensive in the short run that that's for sure. But you can slowly move those calves away from maybe some of those commercial feeds or those higher energy feeds into a grower ration. You're going to need to do some of that until you've really got them up on feed at that two and a half percent body weight for intake, and really get them going before you, you kind of move towards a growing diet maybe with a little more forage a little less energy but. So those are kind of the considerations on the nutrition side. On the health side Jerry on what steps should producers take an early waning to reduce stress and help those calves transition into this, the setting. Yeah. So really the biggest thing is trying to remove as much stress as possible. You know I've seen it in these calves this summer already they're already under stress even with their with their mothers, this temperatures, the dry weather. They want to stand in water if they can find it. It's just contributed to calves calves being stressed already so be mindful of that. However, when you wean them is just like Zach was saying if they have a palatable diet in front of them, based on what they've been eating they're more likely to go to feed. You know and I would recommend that you don't really do anything to those calves except weaning them as non stressful as you can whether that's somehow putting them next to the mother. That's not always easy, because they're so little forage in our pastures and so little forage that's been planted as cover crop or something else. It's going to be hard to low stress wean right next to him in a grazing situation, but if you can wean them, even into confinement and try and handle dust, the same time. Wean them where the mothers can come and beller at them for a few days and the calves more than likely will have an appetite and be hungry and be careful not to overfeed them, but they'll go to the bank and they'll soon lose interest in their moms. Their moms will beller for a few days longer than the calves sometimes when it's like this, but the vaccinations on calves like this, I would just assume not do anything to them. Hopefully, most of our producers have given spring some type of spring vaccinations for the control, excuse me for the control of respiratory disease and uncertainty black leg. If you're going to vaccinate him, I would say wean first, maybe wait two to three weeks and then try and come back in there with some booster doses. If you are if you're in a situation where you have to give vaccines the day you wean them. I would really limit the number of products that you use, maybe just one dose of a respiratory vaccine, something to take care of internal parasites and that's good enough. Don't put a whole bunch of things into those calves that they don't need at this time in their lives just wait until they've weaned and are have started gaining weight again then you can put some of those other vaccines, even something like seven ways not necessary at this time in their life. It's it this is the year when everything you do is maybe going to be enhanced in terms of stress so just be mindful of it. Be better if you could avoid mixing groups together from different pastures. Probably one of the number one things that I see related to calf health is when we mix different pastures together, whereby the calves haven't seen each other all summer long and now we're actually co mingling cattle together. So, if you can avoid that, that helps a lot. If you can actually feed cows and calves together that helps bring in those pastures together but with limited forage and limited harvested forage at this point, all of those things are a little more difficult to accomplish so yeah good luck with it. I think there's there needs to be a lot of early weaning this year. We're just kind of running out of that forage base that we've got with that I'm going to go to Tim now. Currently, all counties in North Dakota are eligible for emergency CRP hang and grazing, what restrictions are in place, and will producers be able to hay before the end of the primary nesting season. Okay, first of all, like to say I'm not an official USDA FSA spokesman so I'm just going to generalize, please check with the local FSA office to get the particulars. Adnan mentioned the D2 status on the growth monitor and that of course makes us eligible automatically for emergency hang and grazing. The problem is it has to be outside the primary nesting season, which is the middle April through August 1. So hang emergency hang has not been allowed due to the nesting season and the request for early hang was denied but really a moot point now because Sunday night at midnight, we're outside the primary nesting season so very close. Emergency grazing has been allowed at 50% capacity for all season for counties eligible for livestock forage program and as of now, all but rich and county are eligible for LFP payments. So on August 2nd, early Monday morning, both emergency hang will be allowed for 60 days, one cutting and emergency grazing that's already been going on if you haven't done it yet, it will be allowed for up to 90 days. No payment reductions in the hang can be sold. Also, I want to mention that on Monday non-emergency hang and grazing starts so part of CRP conservation plans may include hang or grazing and so again, get in your local FSA office and see which one may suit you the best. Another thing that I should mention is for all these USDA programs including CRP hang and grazing beginning farmers, sometimes which are farmers less than five years of active participation do qualify for special considerations that I'm not going to get into so if you're beginning farm to take that much. Back to you Zach. Thanks. Miranda, annual forages are another option for supplemental forage. Many producers are evaluating these for hang grazing. Is there still time to get something established, and how can they increase your chances of establishment with these. Yeah, so there is still time we don't really is going to depend on what use you're looking at. I mean, there, we wouldn't want to put a cool season and we don't want to include brassicas just because of the model moisture in those brassicas and getting that to dry down. The window is closing quickly for warm seasons we'd want to have those to get a good, a good growth, enough growth on them and you'd want something established by the middle of this month really. So there's, there's some research by Marisol birdie that shows like a late July versus an early September planting date on a lot of these, a lot of annual forages and it's a very dramatic difference and it really once you get past that point you're not going to get enough time to make it worth your time, especially for hanging and that's in a normal year. grazing. I would still include those cool seasons, just because the more diverse of mix we have when we're doing cool seasons, the better chance we have for something to establish she and we've seen that in our research this year is that there's been a lot of variability in plant management, but we've had establishment on a lot of our plots that were in early and we're able to capitalize on available moisture. It's just that some different plants are expressed depending on that timing of of planting so that's when one really nice thing about having that diverse mixes reducing that risk of establishment. So those, those will be the big things when we think of this is that timing. And then also if you can try to plant it in conjunction with some moisture. I know what we usually want to say wait till you get some moisture but this year, you know take their risk but if you can you see that there's moisture predicted. This within the week that you're planning on planting wait till the day before that moisture is expected and get it in there so you can capitalize on that moisture. With that Kevin, while we're running out of time to establish a fall cover crop winter annuals are an option for hanging or grazing next spring. What species do you recommend for this and how can producers increase their chance for successful establishment there. And I think annual forges should definitely be looked at this year's an option, especially going to this fall dry feeds going to be short next spring as well so annual forge or something that we can look at. Traditionally we look at winter rye winter triticale and winter wheat. The one that seems to be the most successful that almost is almost, you know, a surefire to work is the winter rise. They tended to take the drier conditions better the over winter better if they haven't totally germinated from the, at least above the surface seem to do better the next spring. So those are the three I would look at if you're looking for something to graze next spring, your best options will be winter rye and winter triticale. If you're looking for something that you want to put up for hay, the winter wheat tends to be the better option for hay quality doesn't mean the other two can't be haid, but the winter wheat probably not going to be used as a grazing scenario, but more of a hating scenario. Traditionally we put these annual winter cereals in about mid September. So we can cheat on that and start earlier, especially if you have some moisture. I think Miranda is right on top on what she made the comments on moisture. If you don't have any moisture at the surface nothing's going to grow. So, so look at that timing is really critical especially with the rise. You can pick that window about a little bit earlier in late August early September, and you got some moisture don't be afraid to see at that time. It'll give you a better chance of success on these winter annuals. We've been shifting gears, given the shortage of forage that producers are facing Zach. We see a lot of people evaluating the use of nontraditional forages. What type of nontraditional forages have producers been considering harvesting as hay this year. So I think when you are considering harvesting some things that you wouldn't in a normal year given the situation. We're in a first and foremost you need to check and make sure that you're, there's no time restrictions on your herbicides. If you've applied some of those to these crops you need to check that and you can do so through the 2021 North Dakota we control guide pages 109 through 112. And the back there have list those restrictions for grazing or hanging so make sure you check in with those. But basically, it's, you know, there's a lot of calls that have been coming in about harvesting cat tails which, of course, cat tails if you can get to where they're at they're going to provide some type of forge but it is going to be of course low TDN and low protein between five and 6%, even before maturity and so with a lot of these plants we're going to talk about quality drives is driven by that maturity so as we approach August we need to consider some of these flax maybe is in one that's been getting a lot of questions, as well as canola need to consider you know what what be putting up and make sure to have it for traits as well as as acid for flax if you're considering some interesting flax there. Make sure you get these forges put up and then send some samples out in your county agents can help you get those forges tested, particularly for nitrates and any of these crops that you're going to be you've already applied this this spring and we know drought increases the concentration of those nitrates and so be aware of that with some of these but flax and canola have been some soybeans typically have pretty harsh restrictions on hanging and grazing relative to their herbicides use so be sure you you make sure before cutting any soybeans that you check those and understand as well as making sure you're speaking with your your insurance adjuster and making sure those crops are still qualifying for the insurance before taking any further steps but those are some of the poisons and I think as you look at soybeans or canola or flax or any of these not only check for those poisons cyanide and nitrates but also get these tested for quality and it's going to be really important this year to have a plan in terms of what to produce feeding based on your cows physiological state so if those cows are still lactating you need to be providing adequate protein and energy, and once those calves are weaned. We can look at some some lower quality forages and bring those in but make sure you're coming up with a plan as to when you can feed these. So you're prepared. Zach touched on some of the toxicity concerns. What precautions should producers take before feeding or grazing those forages given those concerns. You know, and as I did cover these really well starting with the nitrates and the one thing about a drought is drought gives us less forage. And then when it does give us some forage, we have to deal with toxicities. It's like it's like a double whammy for forage production but as you're putting up some of your forages especially if you put up your cool season cereals, like an oat or a Triticale, you need to need to test these for nitrates, especially if you have some kind of level of fertility machine nitrogen that was put on those crops for grain production. And they're going to accumulate nitrogen in the leaf tissue. So if you got the oats and the barley and Triticale, and even some of your warm seasons I would test them for nitrate toxicity. If you're feeding or grazing your brassicas, they tend to accumulate as well as a turnip or a radish. And so those are ones if you're going to graze it, grab a sample send it in, have it tested ahead of time. And you're providing a safe feed for them. If you have any of the sorghum sedans or sorghum or even straight sedan in your mix, you do want to test them for prusic acid, for cyanide toxicity. Again, if you're putting it up for hay, most producers are going to put it up for hay because you need to feed base. Once you have it up for hay, test it so you know what your levels are. So you can understand the options you have in feeding that and blending those off with other feeds. If you're going to graze them, you know, I tend to do two things. I'll sort the leaf tissue, test the leaf tissue because that's what the life's are going to feed on first, test the stem. So you have a feeling for what you have in terms of safe feed or not safe feed. And if it's a toxic feed source just like water, if you don't have water, you don't have cows in those pastures. One thing about forages, if it's toxic to the level where you can't feed it, you don't feed it to livestock because it's going to cause some deaths in your animals and you're going to actually lose more money within that issue. So test for nitrates, test for prusic acid on those warm season sorghum sedan mixes, and also check your waters. We talk about testing water, but producers need to probably be cautious about going out more often to make sure you're not having any water issues in terms of low water or water not working. With the heat we've had today, we've seen a number of producers lose a number of head of cattle due to lack of water in a pasture because of the issues that we have with the dry conditions. Zach, are there any other special considerations that should be taken where we're utilizing these type of feeds? Yeah. You know, particularly some of these may have come with a little bit more of a stem soybeans or a longer dry down period with flax possibly or canola. With considerations for those, make sure you're providing a long enough period for those forages to wilt. As we know, putting up what hay is not only dangerous for spontaneous combustion, but will also create mold and lower that feeding value of those forages. And in pairing with what Kevin said, I think if you have options or can have access to some processing, I would consider tub grinding. Some of these forages, it's a great way to blend maybe your higher nitrate feeds in with some low nitrate feeds, as well as some of these that may be a little more stemmy. It's a great way to reduce losses as a way to improve feeding efficiencies this year and reducing the amount of hay losses that hay is particularly valuable this year. Thank you, Zach. Carl, can I expand on this topic? What options are there for producers looking for additional hay or feed? Well, that's always a challenge this time of year when there's not much feed available. So the first thing I would encourage them to do is talk to your neighbor. At least you can commiserate on what's not available in the community, or maybe perhaps he does have a cornfield or something that's available and you can reach a deal to create some local feed that you don't have available to yourself on your own ranch or farm. Another option is to go to our NDSU feed list and see if that's available. Go to your county agent and visit with them if you want to put something on or if you want to list yourself as needing feed, that type of thing. Or you can go to the Department of Ags, North Dakota Department of Ags website and look for the hay hotline. And that's another option you can look for feed. Of course, we're talking hay in those, that's usually what we refer to, and CRP hay is going to be opening up in a few days in October 2nd. So we might see a lot of hay being moved, but I warned people on the feed quality available in some of that hay. If it wasn't harvested last year, there's probably a lot of old dead grass in that hay. You'll get a lot of tonnage, but the feed quality is going to be really low. So now we're going to have to look for some type of supplemental feed to go with it. North Dakota produces quite a bit of supplemental feed, distillage grains, wheat mids, beet pulp. And we have an array of protein sources out there too, and canola meal and soybean meal and sunflower meal, even flax meal, which is linseed meal. We do have feeds available. You need to contact the producers of these feeds early to see if they are going to be available. So we can have, maybe you can get her into a contract and have them available for the next six months, but some of these aren't releasing their contracts yet until we know what our corn crop is. If you are located next to a corn field, that provides a real opportunity for a major amount of feed if the corn doesn't make it. And based on what things are like out there, we won't know for another three weeks before we kind of get an idea of what's happening there, but there is a lot of forage in certain places like that. So, if immediately you think you'd harvested and haul it to home, but one of the options is to harvest it, lay it out in the field, put it into a silage pile out in the field, and then haul it next winter. Load at a time into your feed yard wherever it is. Of course, if you're sure to feed, the other option is to haul your cattle to feed, and that could be in some part of North Dakota or it might be out of state. But be sure to figure out what's going on there and have a relationship and visit with them and know what they actually have feed because you want your cows to come home in the same body condition they left, or hopefully better body condition than what they left. But be careful of price. Kevin talked about the double whammy, low production toxicity. I'd like to talk about the triple whammy, and that's low production toxicity and high prices. And the high prices for feed this year are relevant. They're doubled from last year, and it's a scary situation. And if you need to really consider that issue of selling part of the cows to conserve part of your resources. So, after that, maybe the next speaker would like to talk about calling cattle out of state. Lisa, could you shed some light on what steps producers need to take for before they intend to send any livestock out of state. Good afternoon and thanks for the lead in Kevin and if I missed something Dr stuck up please jump in. So if you are considering taking livestock out of state. The things that you first need to do is find those places that you want to go or you're considering going. Get what I would consider to be some references from the operators, you know are they good operators, do they typically have a good reputation, and also get some unsolicited or given references so find some people that the operator that you're thinking about going to doesn't give you, you know, and do some good searching. Go down and visit those operations, make sure it's a place that you would like to have your livestock. Next, after you've done those things. I would contact your veterinarian and the North Dakota Board of Animal Health and learn about what the import requirements are for the state that you're headed to in terms of animal health, and then also what the import requirements are going to be coming back into North Dakota. In every case that I can think of, you're going to need a health certificate, a certification of veterinary inspection that lists every animal going out of state on it, including some type of ID on those animals. And so there may be some other requirements for you know testing vaccination some of those things, depending on where you go. And so you want to know that before you go you want to be on the positive side of that, and then you need to also talk to your local brand inspector or the North Dakota Stockman's Association chief friend inspector about what the inspection requirements are going into that state and coming back and also have your animals inspected. And then you know the final thing that I would do, and maybe it should be somewhere near the beginning, but I would never send my animals out without a contract, the contract between you and who you're feeding them with. And you know, I really, I am a person I believe a person's word I believe on a person's handshake, but I get and I think my colleagues get a fair number of calls every year about people wanting to know what their liabilities are what their, I guess, what their legal options are for people who have fed cattle grazed cattle livestock for them and haven't done a good job or on the other side. Those operators who have done that custom feeding and haven't gotten paid. And so, you know, good contracts make good friends just like good fences make good neighbors, and so I would make sure that you have things in writing and both signed. So that you have just really some good legal things that go on and then, once you decide that you're going to send those animals out of state, I would take the time to go check on them once in a while. And if you can't do that at least have somebody in the area able to go check on him and make sure that things are good, and you're checking in on them and from personal experience you know we lost our whole ranch to fire in 2006 and some wonderful people in North Dakota livestock and God bless them for doing that it gave us the opportunity to keep our herd in order. And they took great care of our cattle but I can tell you from experience, even though those cattle probably came home in better condition than we might have kept them in. Nobody will ever keep your livestock the way you do. And so, give them a little bit of grace and how they manage, because our cattle came home fine they have fine with they're very productive, but they didn't care for cattle the way we did. And so just know that going into it and give some grace to those who may take on your cattle did I miss anything Dr stuck up. Lisa good job. Okay, thank you I want to make sure I covered all the health stuff right. So, thank you, and good luck producers you know Carl said something about commiserating with your neighbors. I do want to say that all of us are here for our producers if you need somebody to talk to and you're the most valuable entity we have. It wasn't on my topic to talk about but if you need somebody to talk about talk to please talk to somebody. You are more valuable than your livestock and your operation can continue without you so you know, get some help talk to somebody if you're going through some tough times because we're here for you. Tim on the assistant side for forages and feeds what are available to producers. Okay, well start off I've already mentioned the livestock forage program and the livestock forage program is administered again by the farm service agency and 52 counties in North Dakota, only Richland does not qualify and so it does get a little bit complicated and depends on the severity of drought and the, and as Adnan mentioned the different drought strategies that you're in. And so just a little I won't get into all the ramifications again you have to see your FSA office but in the southeast part of North Dakota where it would be the smallest payment it's the USDA calls a monthly payments. You have to have both acres of pasture land and corresponding cattle numbers and you get paid on the lesser but the maximum that you could get and four counties in Southeast North Dakota be 1764 per cow or $4 and 40 cents a year and that goes all the way up to up in North Central North Dakota where you saw in the drought monitor so bad. They get the maximum number of payments five payments so the maximum that they could expect would be about $88 per cow or $22 for you as long as they have the corresponding acres to go with that so if you're in those counties and have them and so be sure to check with the FSA office. Next there are some loan programs and I know that some of you maybe loan programs are not what you're interested in now but particularly beginning farmers that have a high debt load anyway and and have loans or maybe some of these loans that would help you out particularly on the interest rate so all 53 counties in North Dakota are US Secretary of Disaster Area and qualified again for USDA FSA loans and and these would be the emergency disaster loans that I'm talking about at reduced interest rate and beginning farmers there may have some considerations so that's at the USDA level. Also recently just on Monday our Bank of North Dakota announced two reduced interest rate loan programs directly related to the drought and the first you have to apply with is livestock drought loan program this would be more for your out of pocket expenses to either produce or purchase feed that we've already talked about here on this call or transport feed or livestock to feed it had been discussed or even seed costs for forager cover crops and so these loans are at three and a half percent interest the second category of loans is called the livestock rebuilder loan program and that's a longer term so you have till June 30 2023 and this would be to purchase or rebuild breeding livestock that you have sold and so you need to go through your local banker and your local lender I should say for both of those programs to try to initiate that so those are some of the major ones and back to you Zach. The North Dakota Stockman's Association brand inspectors report had a 13 and a half percent increase this year to date, compared to for livestock receipts and 50% increase in June alone, compared back to 2020. Moving into the fall it is expected that producers will begin to take deeper calls Lisa what can what strategy should producers use to help them make these more difficult decisions. So you know Zach I think for most operators they have probably gotten through the cows that are the easy calls and you know those are the cows that are thin open, maybe old and some cases have bad teeth, bad actors in their herd. And so as you need to as you go into those deeper calls. One of the first things I would do at this point is I would get on the list for early preg checking with your veterinarian. That is going to be one of the easiest ways to call those animals out of your herd is that if you have some open cows, those are easy decisions, they should be easy decisions in a wet year, but they are definitely easy decisions in a dry year so get your preg checking done early. Then go through your bull battery and decide who doesn't need to stick around of your bull battery. You know if you've got some old bulls some lame bulls, you know bulls that have some defects bulls that haven't performed whatever the story maybe send them down the road. And then, as you get into the heart of the herd. You know, I would really start looking at your records. Look at those cows that are thinner. It's going to take more feed as a whole to come to get your cows in shape, and that are thin. And we know that cows that are in a body condition score five at fall preg check time, have a higher pregnancy rate, the following year. It takes more feed to feed those cows to keep them in a body condition score five to six at having time. And so I would really look at those thin cows, along with the late breads and those late bread cows there is probably a decent market for them, further south. You know those folks in the southern plains the southern part of the US tend to have at a different time than we do. And so your late breads might fit in to a calving season there, and you may get a little bit of a premium. So those are some considerations I would look at, but start start with your record start with those cows that are open and late bread and then your thin cows and I think that should give you a good start. Lisa mentioned early pregnancy detections Dr Stucca when is the earliest pregnancy test can be done accurately. Yeah, thanks Zach. You know with with ultrasound and there's even some blood pregnancy tests you can test these cattle for their maybe a little bit more expensive some of the blood pregnancy test. But our ultrasound folks from our veterinarians that do ultrasound tell me they can go 35 days sometimes even less than that to find a pregnancy. Really for palpation. I felt comfortable and I think most of our veterinarians feel comfortable at least in beef cattle with 45 days, determining a pregnancy. Remember this with a little bit of caution. The earlier you earlier you detect a pregnancy, the more days there are to lose that pregnancy and so you can't guarantee that a pregnancy at 30 days or 35 days is going to result in a live calf. So just be aware of that but it's, as Lisa said it's a good idea this would be the season, the time of the year. I've done it before to maybe pull bulls even a little bit earlier and just save back the ones that got bred really on time and go through and I agree with her on early pregnancy detecting and send some of those cows down the road that aren't going to carry a calf or or if they're open and you've got a maybe even a grow yard or some yard where they can be fed for a while to put on some weight. Because weight on on calcows. Not only do they gain weight which increases dollar but they usually end up increasing price per pound to so remember those calcows carry value. If the real thing that value is certainly diminished. Dr stucco what type of drought related animal health concerns are producers currently encountering that we haven't discussed already. Well I've seen all three this summer. We've even ourselves had a few cases of what I call summer pneumonia or suckling calf pneumonia. And I really believe it's part of it's being brought on by extreme heat and all group together standing in water if they can find it. And of course I'd lead some other things as well we've had a, we've had more cases of infectious foot rot this year than I think I've seen for some time. So those two things are sure shown up I just had a call the other day about pink eye. And again it's related, not just a lack of fly control but it's also related to calc grouping up and whenever the wind blows and and I would say I appreciate the wind blowing because that provides some relief for this heat. But when it when for some reason when it gets hot and you got a little fly pressure then they want to group up whether it's standing by water tank, or under the shade cattle rub nose or grub faces against each other and, and can transmit some of those pink eye So those will be the top three that that we see during this time and probably more, I don't know about more severe cases but I would say the prevalence of those diseases suckling calf pneumonia foot rot pink are probably higher this summer. We've over the past month or so we've started to see getting more and more inquiries about regarding the what the beef inventory is going to look like in the state following the drought. Tim, can you discuss how previous droughts have impacted the beef herd in North Dakota and and the US for that matter. It's very unfortunate of course but forced liquidation is occurring. And we've looked at a number of past droughts and I will start off by saying right now that you know it's a tough decision but ranchers are resilient and add none mentioned some previous droughts and did a good job of that And some of those most recent previous drought he mentioned was back in 2017 into 2018 ironically beef cow numbers even increased 10,000 that year going back to 2012 was a previous drought kind of interesting. We increased beef cow numbers 60,000 that year so Drought that are less they were less severe he said that this is one of the worst droughts that we have on record and so we're we're not expecting that we're expecting numbers to go down. We can go back to the 2002 drought then we started with a cyclically high number of beef cows over a mill over a million head. And so we did reduce 2002 and 2003 we did reduce our beef cow herd by three and a half percent. And I guess we're going to talk more about 1988 in a minute, but back in 1988 we had a cyclical lower number of cows and did reduce numbers by 5%. I looked at the brand inspecting records for June and it didn't show 50% increase in marketing from all the different auction locals the way stations and so on, but that 50% sounds like a large number of marketing, but it was 35,000 head more than last year. And when we look at the number of cattle we have on January 1 of this year we had just shy of 2 million total cattle in North Dakota and beef cows. Towards the cyclical high of 975,000. So, if we go back to 1988 where we reduced 5%, that's the worst reduction that we've had due to drought and recent history would take us down from 975,000 to 925,000. Again, this is a bad drought and as Adnan said and sometimes we have to go back to the 30s or so. So, if we reduce the herd 10% which I think would be possible and certainly depends on when it starts raining. If it starts raining and Kevin mentioned and we get some forage and pastures green up that'll help things by this fall if it stays dry continued liquidation but a 10% reduction would take us down to 875,000. I know there's been reports that we're going to lose half our cows and or something like that and there's no precedence for that but you know this is very severe and so we're for sure we're going out. I would predict now that we're going to lose numbers. Back to you Miranda. Thank you Tim and you alluded to this a little bit and touched on it on the beef side but we've heard several people compare this drought to 1988. But we know it's a different a little bit of a different story in terms of economics. Can you discuss how it differs from that 1988 drought? Yeah, sure. Actually, you know, I remember to 1988 very well. In fact, I remember 1961 I was back on the ranch then and and and that would be a very bad drought, particularly up in North Central North Dakota as well but some parts of North Dakota are worse than 1988 and economics really and I hate to talk theory here and I'll try to ease off on that but there are two branches of studying economics. One is macroeconomics where we look at the bigger picture which might be the US economy or the North Dakota economy and then the other part of branch of our study is microeconomics which is more the firm level or this would be the farmer ranch level. But let's start with the micro level, the farmer ranch level. Really the economics are not very much different than they were in 1988. It's about the same situation. Very difficult decisions have to be made and but simply based on we've got so many cattle or sheep or whatever with some of the things we've talked about here today. What do we have for pasture feed resources. There's no cookie cutter. Nice template that we can go to for you to make decisions and so I think a combination of many of the strategies we talked today, rather than one, just doing one and that would be, you know, a combination of downsizing of early weaning of finding alternative feeds and making CRP and so on to get us through. So that's the same thing we did back in 1988. We made CRP and we did things there as well. Maybe moving more to the macro level of what might be a little bit different is in 1988 we were at a cyclical low kind of in cattle numbers at 874,000. And now in 2021 beginning we were at kind of towards the cyclical high which occurred the year before 2020 back where we had 995,000. We had 975,000 cows, 100,000 more cows than in 1988, plus the cows probably weigh 200 pounds more than they did in 1988. So we've got a lot of mows to feed there and a lot of requirements probably have about the same amount of pasture except we're for sure utilizing the pasture a lot better now with the range management that we have and so on rotational grazing and so on and so but we've got a big strain on our resources there because of the number of cattle we have and they're heavy. And probably the other thing that's different is we have to handle a lot more money and you know corn in 1988 was $2 and calves were 85 cents and we're over double add on those two so we just have to have more money. So the decisions are similar to what they were back then but they were difficult then and they're very, very difficult now and but they have to be made but very, very difficult decisions. Thank you. As we look towards wrapping up. I want to thank you all for joining us today, as well as I want to thank all of our panelists for sharing their thoughts. Please reach out to your local extent, NDSU extension agent with any other drought related questions. And as Carl said it talk to your neighbors to commiserate as that's good for mental health. Join us again August 26 for the next navigating drought webinar. Thank you all for joining us and I'm going to just send that mental health. Be sure to check out our farm and ranch stress page for more resources related to that as well.