Five Oklahomans will be inducted into the 2015 Oklahoma Career and Technology Education Hall of Fame at a banquet Oct. 21 on Francis Tuttle Technology Center's Rockwell Campus.


This year's inductees are Phil Berkenbile, retired state director of the Oklahoma Department of Career and Technology Education and former agricultural education instructor for Morrison Public Schools; Dean Denton, retired business and information technology instructor for Broken Arrow High School and National Board Certified Instructor; Dale DeWitt, former member of the Oklahoma House of Representatives and retired agricultural education instructor from Braman Public Schools; Bea Paul, former job developer at Autry Technology Center and former family and consumer sciences instructor at Chisholm High School in Enid; and Gregory Pierce, former superintendent of Pontotoc Technology Center in Ada and former coordinator of Curriculum and Instructional Materials at ODCTE in Stillwater. Pierce began his educational career as an agricultural education instructor at Tishomingo High School.


Three of the five lay claim to teaching ag in local high schools. That includes Phil Berkenbile. He became the agricultural education instructor and FFA adviser at Morrison Public Schools in 1972 and for the next 16 years, built a local, state and nationally recognized FFA chapter and Young Farmer program. It was a national gold emblem chapter and Building Our American Communities and national safety award winner and developed three state FFA officers and numerous competitive event winners and degree recipients.


Another of the inductees that was a long time ag teacher is Dale DeWitt. His first job was working as a hog buyer at John Morrell Packing Co. in Arkansas City, Kan. Shortly after that, he began teaching agricultural education at Helena-Goltry Schools, where he worked for three years. He then moved back to Braman, where he taught agricultural education and farmed for 27 years.
Through the years, DeWitt's FFA chapters were competitive in livestock judging, livestock showing, public speaking and leadership activities.



The third ag teacher in the 2015 class is Gregory Pierce. Pierce entered the CareerTech System through FFA, one of seven CareerTech student organizations. He taught agricultural education at Tishomingo Public Schools and in 1978 moved to the Oklahoma Department of Vocational and Technical Education, now the Oklahoma Department of Career and Technology Education, as agriculture curriculum specialist.



The 2015 class of inductees will increase the Hall of Fame membership to 75. The Hall of Fame, which is sponsored by the Oklahoman Foundation for Career and Technology Education, was founded in 1990.  Click here to read more.

Mondays, Dr. Derrell Peel, Oklahoma State University Extension Livestock Marketing Specialist, offers his economic analysis of the beef cattle industry. This analysis is a part of the weekly series known as the "Cow Calf Corner" published electronically by Dr. Peel and Dr. Glenn Selk. In this week's analysis- Dr. Peel focuses on how the cattle markets are responding to the heavy weight cattle carcass problem of 2015:


"There are encouraging signs that fed and feeder cattle markets have turned the corner on the massive slide in prices in recent weeks. Notice that I didn't say "correcting the overcorrection". What has happened, especially for fed cattle markets, was a necessary correction to provide the market signals to fix a problem that developed over several months due to a lack of proper market signals. Feedlots have been pushing carcass weights for months, abetted by packers, since both had individual as well as market incentives to offset lack of cattle numbers with additional carcass weight.

"However, there are both biological and market limits to how far weights can be pushed before hitting a relatively abrupt wall. Signals such as discounts for heavy carcasses and yield grade 4 and 5 carcasses did not adjust quickly enough to slow the weight train and avoid hitting the wall. Reported heavy carcass discounts have not increased at all and Yield grade 4 and 5 discounts did not increase until September and then only modestly. Even the Choice-Select Spread followed a normal seasonal increase until mid-September before adjusting sharply lower in the face of very high Choice grading percentages that accompanied the overweight carcasses. It has taken sharply lower average fed cattle prices, combined with these quality factors, to emphasize that these heavy cattle must be marketed now.


Dr. Peel asks the question- Is the problem fixed? He offers his take on the answer to that question and contends that " the next two weeks are likely to be the most critical in determining the cattle market situation for the remainder of the year. If the heavy cattle are thoroughly cleaned up, there is good potential for a significant rally and fundamentally stronger cattle markets for the rest of the year."  However- there could be obstacles to that happening and you can  Click here to read more about how heavy weight cattle carcasses knocked the cattle market for a loop and where Dr. Peel sees us heading the balance of the year and into early 2016.

Good news from Washington???  Well, there were a couple of "positives" for the red meat industry that came from the Obama Administration in recent days- and that has folks like Roy Lee Lindsay of the Oklahoma Pork Council smiling. 

The Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations successfully concluded last Monday. That's positive for an industry that has become more reliant on export sales. Lindsay believes getting TPP implemented will give pork producers more access to 11 other countries that represent 40 percent of the world's Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Pork is the meat of choice for the Asian Pacific region. He said many of these TPP countries already buy pork, but this agreement will boost sales. For example, Japan is one of the largest markets for volume and value of U.S. pork.


"If we can do things that reduce the gate price in Japan, that reduce some of those quotas, some of those tariffs and allow us to sell more product into a market that already likes U.S. pork, the upside for us is tremendous," Lindsey said. 


The U.S. pork industry also likes the direction coming from Administration comments on the yet to be released Dietary Guidelines. Last week, the House Agriculture Committee held a Congressional hearing with U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell to review the development of the 2015 Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGA). The two Obama Administration officials jointly addressed whether "sustainability" should be considered in the policy that the government establishes on what the American public should be eating. The Secretaries said the two government agencies will remain within the scope of the mandate established in the 1990 National Nutrition Monitoring and Related Research Act (NNMRRA).

Lindsey says that if the Cabinet Secretaries follow through on their statements made to the Ag Committee on the Dietary Guidelines-  this will be a huge outcome for U.S. livestock producers. 

Roy Lee and I talked about these two issues this past week at the 2015 Tulsa State Fair. Click or tap here to listen to the full conversation.

Contributed by The Samuel Roberts Noble Foundation Assistant Professor James Rogers


I have always been fascinated with animal behavior, especially beef cattle on pasture. They are selective grazers always in search for the highest quality forages. This explains why you see areas of lush pasture go ungrazed in pastures with light stocking rates and high forage availability. Even when we increase stocking rates up to mob grazing levels (1 million pounds of stock per acre), cattle still selectively graze. I've witnessed stocker cattle at a stock density of slightly over a million pounds per acre be turned into a fresh paddock of native range in late June, quickly consume Basketflower flower heads, strip leaves off johnsongrass and tall native grasses, and trample remaining mature forage. Then they look at us begging to go to another paddock. We tested Basketflower flower heads; crude protein (CP) was 17 percent and total digestible nutrient (TDN) level was 72 percent. Samples from the paddock were tested for nutritive value prior to grazing; on average, CP was 8.4 percent and TDN was 54 percent. Fecal samples collected from the cattle during grazing had an average CP of 11 percent and TDN of 65 percent. Obviously, the cattle knew what they were doing. The problem was forage quality availability, and they just could not consume enough of what they wanted to consume to meet intake demands, and consequently protein and energy requirements, for a high daily gain.


This helps illustrate the problem we encounter with fall and winter grazing of perennial forages: forage quality availability vs. forage availability. If stocking rate is estimated based on a 12 month carrying capacity then, by grazing management and forage deferment, excess forage can accumulate for use after the growing season ends. The problem is that carryover forage from early in the growing season is low in forage nutritive value, but availability may be very good. For example, in December 2014 I tested several paddocks of bermudagrass that consisted of carryover spring growth. Forage availability was excellent, slightly below 5,000 pounds of dry matter per acre, but the average CP value was 5.52 percent and TDN was 57.34 percent. I would expect cows grazing this type of forage to behave very similar to the steers on native range discussed previously. Cattle would quickly select for the highest quality, trample the rest and look for somewhere else to go. It should also be noted that a supplement would be required to maintain body condition. Quality stockpile forage is fresh fall growth; if stockpiled from fresh, fertilized fall growth, bermudagrass can have crude protein values in excess of 10 percent (Oklahoma Cooperative Extension Service ANSI-3035). If you are in an area where tall fescue grows well, it too can have very good nutritive value well into late fall and early winter (University of Kentucky Cooperative Extension Service AGR-162). 

Click here to read to read more about stockpiled forages and grazing management.

  

The cattle market has worked lower from the record high levels of last year and the early months of 2015. Stocker and yearling prices have fallen quite a bit, but these animals are still worth a lot of money. Kansas veterinarian Dr. Don Coover of SEK Genetics said he understands the clients he works with, whether they have a few or several hundred cows, that they have a tremendous investment that they've got to take good care of. Cattle producers have to maximize the ability to produce those calves year in and year out. Coover said producers that are trying to optimize their herd production, by getting away from cows that won't carry pregnancies, that can't get pregnant or do get pregnant and loss their pregnancy. Further, he said producers are paying attention to things like, Neosporosis, Bovine Viral Diarrhea (BVD) in having a vaccination program that guard against things like Leptospirosis, Vibrio, Bovine Respiratory Syncitial Virus (BRSV) and Infectious Bovine Rhinotracheitis (BRSV).


"There's a lot of interest in it, people are trying to get a better deal with their nutrition programs, they are trying to get better and more effective results with their vaccination program, their biosecurity program," Coover said. "Everybody is trying to optimize that, because the industry is consolidating, there's more and more money in it and it's more competitive, so yeah, there's a lot more interest lately."


Cattle producers also continue to look at ways to improve their herd genetics through artificial insemination (AI) and embryo transfer (ET). Coover said producers are trying to find better genetics that help them maximize their profit potential.


As consumers have become more interested in where their food comes from and how it's raised, there is a need to raise cattle more humanely.  I featured Dr. Don Coover on the Beef Buzz. Click or tap here to listen to this feature.  

This coming Friday, Superior Livestock will be holding a special internet cattle sale originating from the Conoco Phillips Alumni Center, starting at nine am. Superior is partnering with OSU Animal Science Alums, and will donate $1.00 per head of cattle sold on this special auction to support the OSU Animal Science Scholarship fund.

Deadline to consign cattle is TODAY- October 13th- call Superior to add your calves to the lineup- 1-800-422-2117.  Here is your opportunity to market LIGHT LOADS- Load lots are not required!

Click here for more information about this Friday's special sale that will be happening live in Stillwater.

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Blackjack Farms and Friends will be holding their annual production sale this coming Saturday at Blackjack Farms in Seminole.

The sale will be featuring 70 Angus and Simangus Lots- Including
Spring Bull and Heifer Pair Splits
Fall Calving Cows- most with calves at side
Spring Bred Heifers
Fall Yearling Heifers

Ranches that will be represented include
Blackjack Farms LLC
McFerran Farms
Pfeiffer Angus Farms
Simpson Angus Ranch

For details, contact Keith Grissom at 405-382-7678 or John Pfeiffer at 405-649-2425 or Charles Simpson at 405-21-6933 or Amber McFerran at 405-382-2945.

Online sale information is available here.