Where Cows Go, Soil Fertility Follows: Reworking Winter Feeding in Okmulgee County As temperatures drop across Okmulgee County, our warm-season pastures—primarily bermudagrass, native tallgrasses, and introduced bluestems—are shutting down for the season. For decades, the standard winter routine for many…
By Okmulgee County Conservation District Jennifer Bailey, District Manager If you are running cattle in Okmulgee County, you’ve likely noticed a quiet invader taking over your pastures: Eastern red cedar. It is easy to ignore a few young cedars scattered…
Josh Bushong, OSU Extension West Area Agronomist Emily Efird, Okmulgee County OSU Extension Agriculture Educator Native hay meadows are an important part of Oklahoma’s landscape and mostly occur east of I-35. Native hay meadows provide hay for livestock supplementation, habitat…
If you want to find the most efficient workers on your ranch, you don’t look in the tractor cab or the saddle—you look under a fresh cow pat. While they aren’t the most glamorous part of the cattle business, dung…
As cattlemen, we’ve all been there: standing in a middle-of-the-field pasture, staring at a standard soil test report filled with N-P-K recommendations, and wondering why—even after following the “recipe”—our forage quality still hits a wall. We are used to standard…
The Unpaid Labor Force: Why Okmulgee County Cattlemen should Recruiting Bees to the Ranch In the cattle business, we are constantly looking for ways to cut input costs and increase average daily gains. We talk about genetics, mineral programs, and…
For Oklahoma cattle producers and hay farmers, the key to a lush, productive pasture isn’t just fertilizer—it’s lime. Many soils across the state, especially in the eastern regions, are naturally acidic. If you haven’t checked your soil pH recently, you…
