Horse acupuncture
Dr. Reed Holyoak recently began treating horses using techniques borrowed from centuries in the far east. He's using acupuncture and acupressure along with traditional western medicine. Whether he's a believer in the treatment is a point he's still arguing with himself.

Well, Dr. Holyoak, it sounds like you've had an interesting road to get into acupuncture. You were a skeptic going in.

I was a skeptic. Very much so. I still have the scientific reserve, you know. You want to be able to study this with appropriate controls, and that's very difficult in a single case by case practice, but there's some things that we're working on to try to do some research to really flesh this out. Is there something to it or not anything to it?

You have a mare here you're checking, you're trying to do some diagnostics on. Can you show us how it works?

Yes. On this mare, the students found her this morning acting like she was painful. So in order to figure out acupuncture wise if the pain is associated with one part of the body or another, there's a system that you can use to go through and look at the complete horse. So you start with this in the mouth, and you take a look at her tongue and see how dry or moist it is. She is a little bit pale and tachy. So you start there, look at her eyes, her overall attitude, go through different diagnostic points.

Talk a little about those points as you go along here. Explain that. Western medicine doesn't use that.

They absolutely don't use this. The Chinese, what they feel is that the life essence and life energy source is called Chi , and Chi runs through the body at different highways, if you will. These highways have intersections and they branch, and they traverse the body, okay, but there are certain points along these meridians that you test, and they are specific for areas, muscle areas in the bone as well as areas in organs within the body cavity. There's one here for teeth, and then that one right there where she really responds, this is on the stomach meridian. It's called stomach 7. If they react there, that tells you that her pain is somewhere in this area on this side.

From touching there by the eye.

Right.

Wow.

So we go through here, and she's not responding to these 3 points which would tell us that she had something wrong with this front end. Not seeing it.

So you're just going point by point looking.

There are a series of diagnostic points you go to. You see that? She's definitely reacting through here. This area through here are all diagnostics for her abdomen, so this mare is telling us she's painful somewhere through here.

Now, earlier I palpated this mare transrectally like veterinarians always do in a colic case. So I can kind of cut to the chase on this. We already figured out what's going on. On the acupuncture scan, it tells us the pain is associated with here, and on palpating this mare per rectum, she has an impacted Cecum that we can feel. So that's part of her digestive tract that is dry or just constipated if you will.

So you're able to take and see with this also the same things that you would see normally, so it kind of ties the two together.

What we try to do out here is integrate traditional Chinese veterinary medicine with western medicine and try to use the best of both worlds.

Interesting. What we've seen here is more acupressure but over there you have acupuncture that you have done.

We can do the same thing on this mare but we can go over and discuss that mare. This is a big Thoroughbred mare as you can see.

She's pretty tall.

That was a Quarter Horse and this is a Thoroughbred and this is a big beautiful mare. She's older, she has some significant reproductive tract problems, and this mare has been treated with western veterinary medicine. It just has not helped. Now, whether acupuncture will make this mare fertile or not ...

It remains to be seen, but nothing else has worked.

Nothing else has worked so we are trying this. Another thing about this mare, she likes it. It's true. She likes it.

It actually feels good to her.

Yeah. Without all of this, she will get nervous in these stalls. This is a race horse. She did very well on the track, okay. She has offspring that also did very well on the track. When she's standing here, she goes ok, I'll wait so long and then it's time to get out of here. While we do acupuncture, she has a tendency to be quite calm.

How does this work? You've got electrodes hooked up, needles up there. What are we looking at?

Once again, it's the movement of energy through these highways, these meridians throughout the body, and on these in particular, these are associated with pain and reproductive tract oriented points as well as the release of fluid, and then to build her overall body strength and essence, okay.

So these wires, then, are then hooked up to small amounts of electricity that will stimulate certain points?

Absolutely. Acupressure has a certain amount of response, acupuncture a little bit stronger. If you hook up electricity to it, the response is a little stronger and a little more long-lasting.

So for Oklahoma horse owners, people that have horses at their place, is this something that they ought to be thinking about, or are they not going to find very many places that do it? What's your advice for people in Oklahoma?

Any medicine, you want to find somebody that knows what they're doing. You don't want to find a quwak. You also need to ask yourself is it real or is it unreal? I'm still -- I went into this as a skeptic. I know there are areas where I really feel it helps. There are other areas where I'm going well, we'll wait and see. I still want to make sure that there's some scientific proof here, controlled studies. Does it work, doesn't it work?

Okay. Interesting stuff. Sure appreciate you showing us around.

You bet.

Osage County Cattlemen's Tour
It was a long day-type deal. You can imagine the dust they ate because there weren't many paved roads.

In 1934 the Osage County Cattlemen's Association started touring the ranches of its members and has done so every year since. This Father's day made 75 years.

A function of the program initially was to bring in order buyers and to -- and to provide a selling marketplace for load lots of cattle.

There was a need to bring in buyers to the Osage, and it was quite a different program than we have now.

Nowadays the buyers don't actually need to see the cattle in person. Reputation and technology has changed how Osage county cattle are marketed. In the 21st century the tour is mainly a chance for cattle producers to spend a day learning how their fellow cattlemen are fairing. It's kind of a show and tell for cattle.

Specifically for the producers here in the county, they may get a good opportunity to take away something that works well with another ranch and be able to utilize that on their operation.

When we look at steers it will be a diverse tour where we'll see either a lot of stocker cattle or some cows and kind of the operators up in the northeast corner of the county.

Operators know there's something special about raising cattle in Osage county.

Well, it's some of the best native grassland in the world, we think. Stockers really perform well here. It's a good climate for cow-calf operations.

The tour now moves into its fourth quarter of a century. As Charlie says, it's about cattle, but it's also ...

It's an opportunity for all of us to get together and meet old friends and meet some new ones.

GPS Systems for Tractors
Last week we brought you the first stop in OSU's Division of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources access tour. Today we take you south of Enid to Waukomis and the Pollard Angus Ranch where representatives from P & K Equipment were on hand to talk about the future of farming. Right there, did you see it? That subtle move is the future of farming. Hands-free driving thanks to today's GPS controls.

Just in our area, in this area, we've probably doubled, probably tripled our sales on GPS systems.

Travis Thedford works for P & K equipment and has seen the technology improve a lot over the last 10 years.

The tractor I'm sitting in, this is one of the newest John Deere tractors. It has a fully integrated auto-tracj system that allows it to drive itself. The monitor that's in this tractor can control the sprayer we're pulling as well as all the rates, the on and off, everything becomes automatic. Basically the driver's just got to sit in the seat and make sure nothing fails.

I always look at it kind of like a cruise control on a car. Is it beneficial? Well, if you're driving down the interstate, you know. If you're driving to Oklahoma City from Stillwater, yeah, it's beneficial. It takes a little stress off the operator. That's where I see guidance systems primarily. I think in a lot of cases we've got producers that can drive just as straight as an auto steer can, but I don't think they can do it for ten hours a day. Steering's not the hardest thing that we do on a vehicle, but it is a thing that we do the most, so we take that task away and give it to a computer.

Allowing the driver to focus on other tasks such as monitoring equipment and application rates. Another benefit is accuracy in the field. GPS helps eliminate overlap which reduces the cost of fuel, seed, and other products. New technology is integrating GPS with equipment controls, improving efficiency even more.

As you look at that control system, more and more things are going to start to be tied to that, and like auto shut off on planters or boom sections on sprayers. Now you're not going to double spray areas. It's going to shut the boom sections off automatically as you come across those areas.

When you figure in your fuel savings, your time, you lessen your overlap, all that stuff goes into a kitty, you're going to have a return on investment, depending on how many acres, you could do it in a year. Some guys it might take a couple years.

The cost of these systems depend on how accurate you want to be.

GPS accuracy, I always say is like horsepower. If you want more, you pay more. There's upsides and downsides to most systems. If you look at the WAAS system, it's generally lower cost system, and it's also lower accuracy, you know, in that plus or minus 10 to 12 inches range. Maybe a little better than that some days, but probably generally not worse than that.

And it can go anywhere. The most expensive and most accurate systems are called RTK systems or Real-Time Kinematic.

That's where you'd have your own base station. You have, basically, a globe mounted in a field or on a building somewhere. You have your own repeater. You'll be within an inch every time.

What you're looking it at as a base station antenna has to have five satellites in common with the antenna that's on the vehicle. If it does then it's making individual correction for those satellites signals and broadcasting that to the vehicle. That's where you get your really high accuracy from.

The key is determining how much accuracy you need, so whether producers have it or are thinking about getting it, GPS driven and controlled tractors aren't turning over the wheel any time soon.

Cow-Calf Corner
These last few hot summer days in Oklahoma remind us of the reason why we choose breeding season to try to avoid these very, very high temperatures. You see, there's research that's been done here at Oklahoma State University that looks at the effect of heat stress on fertility in beef cows and some of the causes for that reproductive failure. Back in the 80s they took a set of cows, had them synchronized, bred naturally to some bulls during a time when the temperature was very, very pleasant, in the 70s. Then they took one-third of those cows, put them in an environmental situation that they called a mild heat stress. Another third they put in what they called a severe heat stress, and then compared them to the cows that were left in mild conditions. As you look, you'll see on this particular table, some of the differences that took place. Look first of all at body temperature and see that there is an increase, although it seems pretty small to us, but an average increase of temperature from the normal situation up to the severe heat stress of over 1.5 degrees. Then look at pregnancy percentagse. They compared these cows after they had been in these environmentally stressful situations for about a week they looked at how many pregnancies were still maintained. 83% in the case of the cows in normal conditions down to 64% if they had the mild heat stress and clear down to 50% if it was a severe heat stress. In addition, of those embryos that were still alive in the case of the heat-stressed cows, you notice they weighed considerably less. These are very, very small weights because it's very early in the pregnancy and its weights in terms of grams. But, on a percentage basis, they're considerably smaller than the embryos from cows left in the thermal neutral or comfortable environment. That tells me that even some of those pregnancies that were still present at that period of time may not make it to term and so we would have even a lower reproductive rate. What this all means to me is that we need to try to avoid using mid to late summer in Oklahoma as a breeding season for beef cows. It's going to result in reduced pregnancy percentages if we do. That's just one of the things that happens and its very, very hard to correct. So think about that. If you're beginning a new herd in Oklahoma or you're thinking about changing your breeding season, try to avoid those very hot days in July and August and early September as part of the breeding season. We'll visit with you again next week on SUNUP Cow-Calf Corner.

Market Monitor
The Oklahoma wheat harvest is coming to an end and marketing decisions have to be made. Here to talk about that and more it Kim Anderson, our grain marketing specialist. Let's start with an overall picture of the Oklahoma wheat harvest so far.

It depends on who you talk to and where you are. Overall, the USDA was predicting 73.5 million bushels. I think we'll be relatively close to that, maybe just a little bit higher. I think our quality is better than we anticipated, say, two weeks ago. Our protein is well above average. I think yields have been relatively good given the situation, and if you look at dockage and rye, we had problems with those as we anticipated, but that was in just certain locations.

Okay. With the overall average size of the crop being well below what we normally see, why have prices fallen about $1.25 this month?

Well, if you'll look back, say, in early May, the Kansas City Board of Trade July contract prices were about where they are today. In early May I think the market anticipated lower yields and production in Oklahoma, Texas, and even into Kansas. I think that drove the market up about 50 cents. The funds came in the market. I think that drove it up another 75 cents. The market realized there was more wheat than they expected. Funds got out of it, that took their 75 back, and now we've taken that 50 back where we thought we was having a real bad crop.

So where do we expect prices to go over the next few months?

Well, if you look at the September contract which we'll be rolling to relatively quick, it's right at $6. I think $6 is a critical point. If we're at $5.95 on Monday, I expect another 30 cents down in the near term. If we can hold $6, we might get just a little bit of increase. In my gut, I feel like prices are going to continue to go down at least another 30 cents, maybe another 50 cents. If I was a producer, I'm going to sell half of it at harvest and the other half in September, October, November.

Thanks, Kim, for being here. Good information as always.

Shop Stop
Hello and welcome to Shop Stop. We're going to talk about anchoring systems today in concrete. We've got a lot of different options, some of which we'll show you. There are probably other options out there as well. The first one, there's some bolts like this where you'll drill a hole into your concrete. It's got a little expansion piece on the end of it. You'll take this end and hammer this bolt down in here, and then as you tighten that bolt, as you start to pull it back out, this piece slides down and becomes a lot tighter and it gives you a nice, solid fit there. They come in a lot of different sizes, extra large down to fairly small.

They also have one called a lead unit. It's got lead wrapped around it. You stick it in the hole and you have to use what's called a tamping tool. You rest it on top of there and drive it into the bottom of the hole and it expands it to lock it in place. Other options are simply just small concrete screws. You can use these. You just take your hammer drill, drill a hole in the concrete, and then this screws in and holds down whatever you want. I think the big key is that you want to try to drive these in by hand, if possible. If not, you know, a small drill. If you take your half inch hammer drill and try to screw these in, you'll break a bunch off pretty quick. That's not the way you want to put those in.

Probably one of the neatest methods they have now is an epoxy method where you take a system like this. You've got a part A and a part B. You connect a mixing stick on this unit right here. As the A and B flow through here, they mix together. You put that down in the hole and fill it about halfway up, and then just take a piece of all threads and twist it up in there and let it set. That's probably the least destructive method, and all of these particular anchor systems, if you look at the manufacturer's recommendations, they'll make sure you stay certain distances from the side and a certain depth.

That's it for Shop Stop this week.

We'll see you next week.

AGWEATHER
Hi. I'm Al Sutherland with your Mesonet AGWEATHER report. Our first map shows rainfall for the last 30 days, and those areas in orange or darker orange, they have received 60% or less of their normal rainfall. When we take a look at how that rainfall has impacted our soil moisture, you can see those dry, brown areas across the state. Places like Durant and Hollis, up near Oklahoma City going up towards Enid and out to Cheyenne and then over to Boise City. Lots of areas now beginning to get dry at that 10 inch depth. While this has been a week of crop suffering from a lack of moisture, it's been a week where people have been suffering from a high heat index. Tahlequah has been on the upper extremes of the heat index this week. This chart shows how the heat index for Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday up over 108, even though the temperatures have just been in the mid 90s. Here's Cindy Morgan with a view as to how June will finish up.

Hi. Well, the lack of good rainfall has really dried out soils in the northwest quarter of the state. The yellow-shaded areas on the U.S. drought monitor show areas that are abnormally dry while the tan-shaded areas indicate moderate drought is currently in place. The drought outlook doesn't have much hope for improvement. The yellow and brown-shaded areas on this map means developing or ongoing drought is expected for the remainder of the summer. We've completed our first full week of summer, and in the climate forecast the first week of July pretty much follows the hot and dry weather pattern we've seen the last couple of weeks with a very good chance of above-normal temperatures but below-normal precipitation for the entire state. That's all we have for this week's Mesonet AGWEATHER report. We look forward to seeing you next week.

Livestock Marketing with Derrell Peel
Well, Derrell, a lot of history up in Osage county. I'm sure the producers up there are wondering what are cattle markets going to do. We have 4th of July coming up. How does that affect beef demand in the market?

Well, to understand the situation that we're in, let's go back and recap a littl bit what's evolved over the last couple of months, particularly with respect to box beef and the demand side of the market. In early to mid April we began to see an increase in box beef demand or box beef prices at least. Leading into Memorial Day weekend, we ran prices up from lows around $1.40 up to over $1.50, $1.52 actually we peaked at. Going right into Memorial Day after the buying was done, we still were in the $1.47 range. Then you know, the question is could we hang onto that? Would we see follow through buying between Memorial Day and 4th of July. What's evolved over the last two or three weeks is that we've seen box beef prices go back down to that $1.40 level. I think the answer is in we haven't seen the follow through buying. There's no real indication of a lot of buying for 4th of July. We'll probably still trying to use up some of the meat from Memorial Day. Demand is pretty weak. That's the real story right now.

Is there anything that producers or the beef industry can do to help themselves?

We're doing as much as we can at this point. Beef production for the year is down about 4% so far this year. Both slaughter and now carcass weights have come down. There's not much more we can really do to help ourselves at least in the short run. Most of the things that are affecting us are external to the industry and out of our control. Unfortunately, what that suggests is if things don't improve, there will be long term adjustments in the industry, that is to say, people will go out of business and that would be the way you would eventually bring prices back up to a profitable level.

One of the hardest hit areas is feed lots. They've been losing money for months and months and months. How do they look right now? Is there anything on the horizon on for them.

We've taken a tremendous amount of equity out of the feed lot sector. That can't go on indefinitely. If things don't change, if we don't see some demand recovery, that means eventually we'll see some loss of feed lots. We're getting some anecdotal indications that some feed lots are near the end of their rope. We'll begin to see those long term adjustments if things don't change.

You'll be watching that pretty close. Is there any bright spot in the middle of all of this? It doesn't look real promising right now.

Well, there's two bright spots. One is that, from a supply standpoint, the industry is in fundamentally pretty good shape. All we need is demand to recover. Doesn't look like 2009 is going to participate in that much. As we go forward with a macro and a global recovery, the beef industry should be in a position to enjoy some fairly strong markets.

All right. Derrell Peel, thanks for being here. Derrell Peel, our livestock marketing specialist here on SUNUP .