- [Announcer 1] "Montana Ag Live" is made possible by: the Montana Department of Agriculture, MSU Extension, the MSU Ag Experiment Station of the College of Agriculture, the Montana Wheat & Barley Committee, Cashman Nursery & Landscaping, the Gallatin Gardeners Club, and the Montana Federation of Garden Clubs.

(gentle music) - You are watching "Montana Ag Live" originating today from the studios at KUSM on the very dynamic campus of Montana State University and coming to you over your Montana public television system.

I'm Jack Riesselman, retired professor of plant pathology.

Wasn't here last week.

Darrin Boss took my place, and I want to give a good shout out to Darrin.

He did a great job.

I got back in time from Baltimore to watch the program, and the visuals for that program were absolutely outstanding.

So thanks to Jane Boles for promoting beef here in Montana.

One of our big commodities.

With that, folks, we got an interesting program tonight.

I guarantee it because we have a county extension agent joining us as our guest this evening.

And I tell you what, there's no better job to have in the state of Montana than being a county extension agent because you get to meet a lot of people, you get to do a lot of different things, and you get to interact with a lot of kids in 4-H programs.

So we're learning a lot more about that as we go along.

But let me introduce nice panel.

Way to my left, Brent Roeder, he's been on many times.

If you wanna know anything about sheep, lamb, cooking lamb, anything like that, well, ask the question tonight because this man is probably the world's renowned expert in sheep production here in the United States.

How was that?

(everyone laughing) - I don't know about that, Jack.

- You're laughing.

Our special guest tonight, and I'm glad to have her down here, Jenn Swanson.

Jen is from Choteau, Montana.

Teton County Agent, 4-H agent, Ag agent, she has a wealth of knowledge, she has a lot of good things to say, and if you wanna ask about county agents' involvements in communities, this is a good time to phone in, the number will be on the screen shortly, and you can ask Jenn what she knows about everything.

So there.

- That's why I invited Brent.

(everyone laughing) - And Tim Seipel.

Tim is our weed scientist.

And Tim's across is a ecologist, but I don't believe that.

He's a weed scientist.

And of course, Abi Saeed.

Abi is a very renowned extensive horticulturalist.

If you have questions about plants tonight, tropical, winter annuals, anything, Abi can ask.

What are you laughing about?

You're very good at that.

And answering the phones tonight, Nikki Vradenburg and KD, I'll get the last name right, Hess.

Thank you for being here.

Jenn, tell us about Teton County and what you do up there.

- Well, I've been the ag agent for about three years, coming up on three years, and it is literally everything from soup to nuts.

I mean, they asked me for a quote, you know, before I came on the show and I said, "Bats to botulism".

You know, bats was my very first call and botulism is the most recent call I've had and it's been everything in between.

And I just love it.

You're right, it's one of the best jobs you can have because it's relational.

The whole thing is relationships within your community and within the extension world and with these wonderful specialists, so.

- You know, if I had a to do over again, I might've been a county extension agent because I do like the diversity that you guys have out there.

How do you keep knowledgeable in all the things that you're expected to know?

- Well, I'm still trying to figure that out, Jack, three years into it.

But I do think, you know, this is a second career for me and I'm pretty comfortable saying, I don't know, but this is a great question and I'll help you find out.

You know, and having been a scientist, I think I feel real comfortable doing research for people.

And people don't ask you the easy stuff.

You know, these farmers and ranchers, they know what they're doing.

And so when they call, a lot of times, it's... You know, rarely somebody new starting out with an easy question, but usually it's an off the wall thing.

And so helping to do the research is the real joy.

And then you just get to work with so many people in the community to research one problem, you know?

- Yeah, I agree with you entirely and I'm gonna do my promotional gig right now.

Choteau is one of my favorite little towns in the state of Montana.

I may like Fort Benton just a little bit better, and Scobey in the eastern part of the state is really neat.

And for people in Missoula, Billings, Bozeman, Helena, get out of your zip code sometime and drive out to rural Montana and see what it's really all about.

It's beautiful.

Eastern Montana is gorgeous.

The Rocky Mountain Front, the Missouri River Breaks.

There's so much to see in this state, and especially agriculturally, that you ought get out of your zip code and take a drive around Montana.

And that was not a paid tourist promotion, but it's the way I feel.

Tim, this person would like to know, is there anything new on the Russian... What is a Russian weed?

- The Russian Thistle?

- [Jack] That's the one.

It didn't come across like that.

- Yeah, so Russian thistle, it's in the amaranth family, same family as kosher.

It looks real wiry when it kind of germinates about this time of year of a couple weeks ago.

It gets harder and harder to manage in Montana.

Post-harvest, it's really difficult.

Usually, people, you cut the wheat off the top and then it'll grow later in the season and then you'll get a big flush of seed into the seed bank.

So some people try to manage it post-harvest.

Is there any new products out there for it?

No, not really, but there's some decent herbicide programs that people can use in conventional crops.

The hardest thing comes down to post-harvest management, and what people usually do is use 20 gallons of water per acre and spray fairly high rates of gramoxone or paraquat on it post-harvest.

- And Roundup resistance is pretty prevalent now?

- Yeah, Roundup resistance is pretty prevalent.

I don't think that Roundup resistance is super prevalent in Russian thistle actually, but I would need to go out and really test and look at that.

But there is resistance to the good old Group 2 herbicides, you know, old Glean that we used to use and things like that.

But not too common for Roundup Ready because the weed often merges after Roundup sprayed.

- Okay.

Brent, will sheep dine on Russian thistle?

- To some degree, when it's young, but once the thorns get hard, they won't make a lot of use on it.

So they make better use on Russian thistle or on kosher, things like that.

We did a research project a couple years ago at, it was in a couple of different spots, but looking to see if sheep would use Canada thistle?

Fairly similar type deal.

They would use it a little bit early in the spring, but since it's rhizomatous, it's really, you have to remove a lot of the biomass to have an impact on it.

But once the thorns started hardening up a little bit, they really didn't make a lot of use on... Sheep do a really good job on knapweeds species spurge, things like that, but there's some things they won't eat.

- So is... - I asked those sheep.

I remember looking at the feeds and they ate the triticale until it was completely gone.

And there was some Canada thistle left in there and I politely asked if they would eat it, but they didn't do it.

- I was always told that sheep would eat anything.

But not quite.

- Yeah, not quite.

- Not quite.

- So the question here came in from Big Timber.

Jane, or Jenn, just outta curiosity, they wanna know what the number one weed species problem weed that you have in your county?

- Yeah, that kind of depends.

You know, it depends on the setting.

So we get a lot of calls for kosher actually, you know, in rural areas, and people would like to have the borrowed ditches sprayed and look nice and tidy, but there's only so much we can do.

And so in our county, the weed policy is really just to tackle the noxious weeds.

So we're leaving kosha alone.

Cropland folks of course are working on that.

We have definitely like a weed of the year.

You know, it seems like every year, certain weeds just, it's their year.

You know, I was hiking here this morning and there was yellow star thistle, or excuse me, star thistle everywhere, so, and salsify.

In Teton County, we have a lot of cheatgrass, you know, out in some of the pasture areas.

So we're dealing with that too.

And of course Canada thistle on the noxious list is common in our hay ground.

And so when I go out for hay certifications, I'm seeing a lot of Canada thistle.

- I think that's probably true in most counties around the state, that those weeds are the predominant one.

- Sometimes the wild oat that comes off the Fairfield Bench down towards Choteau is pretty ferocious too.

- Can't believe you brought that up.

(everyone laughing) - Yeah, there's no shortage of wild oat.

- Yeah.

- Yeah, on that note, I haven't been involved with agriculture as much as I used to be.

What is the best herbicide for wild oat control right now?

- Ooh, that's a good question.

There's a few different things that people can do.

Within... Hmm, that's a really good question.

Within barley, within malt barley, where it's the most difficult, there really isn't too many options to be honest.

It gets tougher and tougher.

People have gone back to Far-go, Tri-lite that we've used in the past as a pre-emergent.

People have used the herbicide called Axial, which is a grass herbicide, but it's not working as well as we'd like it to.

It has in the past, it's getting a little bit tougher.

There's some other things you can do out there, but it's kind of, it can be a little bit, it can be a hard road to hoe.

You know, wild oat really likes tillage.

So if you have a no-till system, you usually see the amount of wild oat that you have to go down, but what comes up is cheatgrass usually 'cause it likes that no-till better.

- Okay.

- So Tim, even on like the Fairfield Bench, would you say, 'cause it's pretty notorious for having chemical-resistant wild oats.

I even heard about it in Australia last summer from some people that were down there that knew about it.

But growing, or living there now, it seems like a lot of people are doing a lot better job rotating canola in, drove by some lentils on the way down here, things like that.

That certainly would help.

- That, oh it absolutely helped.

You know, if you think of our two bigger malt barley regions in Montana, you kind of think of the Fairfield area and then you think of down around the Billings and sugar beet, Huntley area.

And Huntley actually doesn't have a problem with herbicide-resistant wild oats that the Fairfield area does.

And that's because they have more crop diversity with corn, sugar beet, different things there.

Whereas you get into the Fairfield area and it's concentrated on malt barley production a lot.

So adding in that diversification in the rotation really does help reduce that problem that you have.

And there are, we do have a line of wild oats that are resistant to 13 different herbicides off the Fairfield Bench, so it's not- - Yeah, nasty weed, no doubt about it.

Abi, we are not ignoring you tonight, but we have one here.

And this is a good question.

It came from Helena.

This caller wants to know, when using the weed and feed fertilizer, does the weed part need to be on the leaf of the plant?

Does it need to be on the root?

- So the fertilizer itself, is that what they mean?

- Well, I think the weed and feed, you get a herbicide with it, so.

- Yeah, you get a herbicide mixed with nitrogen or some other nutrients as well.

It doesn't have to be on the leaf surface itself, depending on the type of wheat and feed product that you use.

And so sometimes you can get pelletized weed and feed products that you wet down.

And so it depends on what the active ingredient is, but if you have a spray product, of course, it's probably using some of those contact herbicides.

So if you're not sure about what it is, that would be a great question to contact your county extension agent.

They can look at that label for you and tell you if that product needs to be touching the surface of that wheaty vegetation or if it could work with the palletized form and wet it in.

- Okay.

Interesting question for Jenn.

I get a kick out of this one.

This is from another county agent in the state and they won't say who.

- Mark?

(everyone laughing) Mark King?

- What they wanna know is, do you have any secrets of success for encouraging volunteers for 4-H programs?

- Oh that's a tough question.

You know, I think I inherited a really fantastic 4-H program and so I've been blessed with wonderful volunteers.

And I just was telling the livestock committee last time we met, I really look forward to the meeting 'cause I get to see 'em and interact with them and I've been blessed with great volunteers.

And I think the secret really is just to show the love for the program and to keep the eye on the prize.

You know, this is really not about anything other than youth development and people working together.

So making sure that you emphasize that at every meeting, you know, that we're here for community and it's, you know, the sale is nice and it's a great fundraiser for kids' college and the learning projects are wonderful, but we're really here to be a family, and at the end of the day, if we don't have that, we don't have anything.

So I think when you keep that feeling, you know, you keep your volunteers, and I inherited a really good set of volunteers.

- There has been some issues post-COVID of filling volunteer positions in the state.

And you don't have to be an expert in anything.

You're just willing to work with the youngsters.

And I strongly encourage anybody that's been associated or not even associated with 4-H to become a volunteer because it's a family, and it's a great program and you get to meet a lot of great kids.

Okay, with that, Abi, now I'm gonna hold this one for you in a minute.

From Big Timber, I'll throw a curve at Tim, black medic, they want to get rid of it.

It's a bad weed and they're not opposed to chemicals.

So have at it.

I know it's a tough one.

- Yeah, so it's a black med, it's a Medicago species.

It's actually in the same genus as Alfalfa.

And so it grows flat and prostrate on the ground and it makes teeny tiny black seeds that are hard as rocks and will live in the soil for a really, really, really long time.

And was this in a forage setting?

- Doesn't say.

- Doesn't say.

In the lawn setting, I think you can use something like Roundup for lawns, which has sulfentrazone in it, MCPA.

A little bit of Quinclorac that does good on field bindweed.

That's probably a really good setting.

If you're in alfalfa, it's obviously, or an alfalfa grass mix, it's obviously a much more difficult weed to deal with and there's not really many options for those settings in there.

In weed crop setting, you can use your broadleaf herbicides that you would have probably already applied because I think we're getting to flag leaf in a lot of our wheat now.

So it's getting a little late to put herbicides in depending on where you are in the state.

But it is a tough weed.

The hard thing about it is even if you get good efficacy, those little black seeds will live in the seed bank for 10, 20 years and so you'll see it come back again.

I would try to get a good grass stand up over the top of it and it helps choke it out in there too and you don't see it.

- Yeah, it is a nasty weed.

I've got more than I need.

- Uh-huh.

- Brent, this person has watched the program in the past and we've talked to a lot about cattle numbers being down.

This person is curious whether or not sheep numbers are down or are they trending up?

- No, sheep numbers are down too, Jack, and actually they're down kind of worldwide except for China.

Australia... Western Australia lost more sheep in the last three to five years than we have in the entire United States.

The wool market, especially since COVID, has been really depressed, although about the last two, three weeks, our domestic wool market's been moving a little bit.

But our numbers in Montana, I think we peaked in the United States in about 1950s.

Mid 1950s, we had 56, 57 million head of sheep in the United States.

So we were a major player.

Australia currently only has about 68 million head of sheep, so.

We had a lot of sheep in the '50s and we're currently about 5 million left in the United States.

They say we're about 182,000 left in Montana.

I think we're a little lower than that.

Just the... With the loss of the wool market, and we're getting so much imported lamb now, it's really difficult to compete with them on a price point for consumers.

And so the combination of those two things and along with predation and the high cost of labor now and high cost of inputs, yeah, we're down both on sheep and cattle numbers, yep.

- Do you have a sheep program, lamb program in your county?

- Yeah, and Brent is wonderful enough to help me with it, yeah.

You know, since he lives in our area and he's the sheep expert in the state, I made sure to... One of the first calls probably was, would you still be involved with their 4-H program?

And I raised cattle in my past but didn't have any sheep knowledge.

And so it's been really fun for me to, you know, learn from Brent and I'm so grateful he is still involved.

- [Jack] Yeah, that's great.

- We have about 15 kids, I guess, bringing lamb this year to the fair, so.

- So Brent, in terms of like that, you know, market for wool, I heard a farmer up in Malta just a couple of months ago talking about using wool as a soil amendment.

Do you know very much about that?

- Yeah, it's an area that that's growing in interest because we do have quite a bit of wool in the US that we cannot, there's no value for it, so.

High in vegetable matter, straw, hay, burs.

So that will, we cannot process it in the United States.

It has to be sent to China for processing because of some of the environmental rules that we have here in the US.

And so that wool therefore has not being sent over there because of the high cost of transportation and there's some tariff issues that play into that.

And so there are a lot of people looking at using, there's a couple of people in Montana that are making it, but the gentleman that developed the, he actually holds the patent on it, is down in Utah.

And the reason he got the patent was he wanted to save it for American producers.

The interesting thing about, we're doing some research on it at Fort Ellis.

We just collected the post trial soil samples and I'll probably send them on Monday in for analysis.

The thing that's interesting about, that makes wool pellets interesting as a natural fertilizer, say, compared to wood chips or compost, it has an extremely low carbon and nitrogen ratio.

It's about 3.8 or 4 to 1, where manure compost is probably 15 or 20 to 1.

And so from a natural fertilizer standpoint, it breaks down extremely quick in the soil, has both a high carbon content, it's about 40% carbon, and it's also very high in nitrogen too.

And so we're looking at that aspect of it to figure out where we can use it in some agronomic situations.

It's being used heavily right now in the horticultural setting, mostly as a replacement for peat moss, especially in starter soils, is what they're using it for, so yep.

- Great.

- I will say that my wife tried, you gave me some wool pellets last time you were on and my wife planted something in 'em.

I don't know what it was, but it must be working because the plants haven't died.

- Yep.

- So... (everyone laughing) - There you go.

- I'm sorry.

(everyone laughing) No.

Serious, I think it is a pretty good.

- I think one of the issues people have with wool pellets, I talked to a lot of producers that are using trash wool, what we call tags or bellies, and some of 'em have had some issues with it and I think they're actually applying too much.

And the data that I've looked at, there's some unpublished data.

There's not a lot of published data out there on it right now.

The data I've looked at from the horticultural trials, they're basically replacing 5% of the potting soil mixture with wool pellets.

So it's not a lot.

One of the studies I looked at, they were using one liter plot, or one liter pots, and they were putting one gram of wool pellet in a one liter pot and it actually showed an increase.

They were using lettuce as their experimental model and they actually got an increase in leaf production out of the lettuce just adding one gram per.

So I think it... And there's some theory that, basically, by adding that much carbon and nitrogen to the soil, you get a big microbial population boom.

And that might have some negative impacts for plants that are growing, so yep.

- Great.

- Okay.

I learned something, thank you.

Caller from Shepherd.

We don't get a lot of callers from Shepherd, so thank you for calling in.

This person has what he calls goat heads and I assume that's probably puncher vine.

They do occur in the dry area in Central Montana, I believe.

He says they're very hard on bicycle tires.

He's tired of spraying them and digging them up because they're so persistent.

He wants to get rid of 'em, so how does he do that?

- Oooh.

Yeah, I don't have the easy answer for that one, I am sorry.

I think it's really tough.

I would try, you know, it can be really bad, round gravel driveways around the edges of areas where it always comes in and grow.

And grows on the edge.

Miles City, I got a flat tire on my bike in Mile City from, yeah, over by the rodeo grounds there.

(Tim sighing) Yep, I would try something 2,4-D, I would try herbicide, I would try Swal, spray as best I could and get the goat, get the seeds out of there and try not to let that litter accumulate where those little goat head seeds will get in there.

I think that can be really, really hard.

There are bare ground herbicides like Diuron that people will put down and prevent anything from growing, but that will prevent anything from growing for years.

So be real careful if you do something like that and make sure that it doesn't move.

Like the wind doesn't blow the dust away.

That's my unsatisfying answer.

(everyone laughing) I'm sorry.

- You can move away from where puncher vines grow.

- Yep.

Yeah.

- We don't have them in Bozeman but we don't need any more people coming to Bozeman right now, so.

Anyway.

Okay.

Abi, you have something here that is fascinating to me.

My spinach is not that far along, but in some parts of the state I know it is.

And what's wrong with that spinach?

- Yeah, so this is Tim's spinach, and, yeah.

(everyone laughing) Tim always has a great experimental plants to show.

But it has these little blotches on the leaves and that's actually spinach leaf miner.

It's the larvae of a type of fly and it's feeding on the inside of those little blotches.

And so this can be something that impacts spinach and other related plants as well.

It can be found on- - [Jack] Hold it still so they can see it.

- Yeah, it can be found on weedy vegetation too.

And if you see kind of spinach with these blotches, although it's safe to eat a little bit of extra protein, you can remove these pretty much as soon as you see them and compost them or get rid of them so that you don't have them fully develop and then lay new eggs afterwards.

You can also do a little bit of sanitation.

So cleaning up any debris.

So if you have these leaves falling, cleaning that up in your garden.

You can use some pesticides as well.

But usually with a combination of sanitation and keeping on top of it, that can help you reduce the likelihood of this.

- I just add a little more vinegar, you never know what's there.

- Exactly.

Exactly.

Little bit extra protein in your spinach.

- Yeah, that's true.

- You add it as a weed killer or as a... (everyone laughing) - It kills the taste of spinach.

(everyone laughing) No, I do like good spinach, and the leaf miner, everywhere is a serious.

And they also on table beets, you'll have the same.

- Yes, you'll have it on beets, yeah.

- So I have a question here from a student in Livingston.

This person would like to know what courses...

They're curious about becoming a county agent.

I think we sold 'em early.

So what major would they take to become a county agent?

- That's a really funny question, Jack, because I took a really unconventional route myself.

So I'll give one example of what might work.

At least for me, I'm really enjoying it.

So I was a biology major actually with an emphasis in plant physiology from UC Davis.

That's where I got my first degree.

And then I studied clinical pharmacology, but it lent itself very well to pesticides and toxicology.

And, you know, I'm a firm believer in just knowing the chemical name of things.

I don't try to remember all these, you know, amazing brand names that Tim's able to rattle off.

But, you know, that background has really helped me just understand the impacts of the pesticides and impacts on animals and humans as well.

So that turned out to be useful, accidentally.

And then of course having a little bit of practice teaching never hurts because a lot of what you end up doing with kids and adults is a learning environment where you're interacting with them in a teaching or a learning capacity, so that's helpful.

But I think the more common route really is to take an agricultural ed major, a range science major, you know, a plant pathology major.

So I think those would be really helpful.

But I think there's a lot of roads to Rome.

- Yeah.

- It's a great job.

- [Jenn] It absolutely is, yeah.

- We played a game, cracked the case, that the ag agent update in Billings a few weeks ago when all the ag agents come together.

- That was really fun.

- And I was amazed by the diversity of the questions.

We had how much should I lease this ground for for grazing to how should I spray this weed, to what's wrong with my tree, to, we had sheep pathology questions.

And it was an amazing.

It's amazing what the extension agents do in Montana working across such a diverse range of topics.

- Okay.

- But fun.

- Sounds good.

Thank you both.

From Florence, this caller has quaking aspens, they are old roots that have spread out in the lawn, and they're worried about spreading into the drain field.

How can they get rid of them?

They are all over the lawn.

Are there any chemicals that you can use?

I don't believe there are.

- I mean, one of the ways...

This is tough though, 'cause aspens are just notoriously tough to remove because they will take over larger areas.

But if you do kind of cut them back and you apply a herbicide right on that fresh cut, you can reduce that likelihood of them continuing to proliferate.

But you'd probably need to keep up with that over and over.

I can't think of an easy solution for that.

- No.

- There used to be a product called Vapam.

I don't know if it's still available.

That was a soil fumigant that you could knife into the soil and it would kill the roots in that area.

And that's been, you know, I'm an old school person, that's been 30 years ago when they used Vapam.

I don't know if it's still available.

But you could probably look it up online and see.

- Sometimes cutting with the cultivation.

Sometimes a cutter will, especially if the roots are marching towards the drain field and you can cut through.

You know, sometimes people deep rip things or stuff.

If you can cut through there and break those rhizomes there, they won't move so much in such a direction, you know.

You'll get resprouting right there, but they won't move further usually.

So that can be a little helpful.

- Okay, thanks, Tim.

Brent, this person from Cascade would like to know the current status of the wool lab at Montana State University.

- It's a good question.

The building is going up quickly.

We have reached our, we...

The legislature asked us to raise a million dollars in private equity with the money that the legislature put into it.

We have reached that million dollar fundraising goal, but we're still fundraising for some additional equipment, things of that nature.

So we just took a tour of it with one of our donors.

Last Tuesday, I think we were in the facility.

They're doing a very good job.

It's right on schedule.

We're expecting to be opening February of 2026 is when we hope to be into the building and our new facility and, yeah, carrying on with some more research, so yep.

- Okay.

Question I have.

Will that wool lab serve states other than Montana?

- It already does to some degree.

So there's only two university wool labs left in the United States.

So one of them is at Texas A&M Research Center in San Angelo.

They generally focus more on what we call commercial core testing, which is wool from the United States.

It's gonna be sold on an international basis.

It all has to have a core test, like a hay test, real similar to it.

And our lab does more grower services.

We're more interested in doing research and services for people that wanna do value added wool processing just because of the clientele that we have here in the state who are doing a lot of trying to reinvigorate the grown-to-sewn wool clothing made in the US product, so yep.

- Okay.

I'm happy to see that come online next year.

If I'm around, I'd like to be there when you open that.

- [Brent] You'll be here, Jack.

You'll be here.

- Okay.

Sounds good.

Quick question for Abi, then I've got a good one for Jenn.

I like to throw a curve here too.

From Helena.

The caller planted peppers, and one day later, a deer ate the tops off.

Does he need to replant or will they continue to grow and be okay?

- That's a tough question, and usually for when you're planting a lot of our annual veggie plants, they're pretty young, so I wouldn't say they would have a robust root system if they ate the tops off the day after you planted them.

I would say it's unlikely that they're gonna produce enough growth or have enough energy reserves in those roots to produce more growth.

So you can try it out, see what happens in the next few days, but I would probably say replanting those.

- And then we still have time.

It's still... - Yes, you still have great time.

This early June is one of the best times to plant those warm seeds and veggies.

- They grow then.

If you plant 'em earlier, they just sit there.

- Exactly.

- Yeah, I figured that out.

- Exactly.

- Abi, can I ask you a follow up question about that?

When people plant perennials, then they get a late frost, you know, and it basically burns all the leaves.

Would you leave 'em there and see if they'll sprout from the roots next year?

- Yeah, so for perennials, I would leave them there because they usually have a more robust established root system and they're used to being knocked back by those cold temperatures then bouncing back, but for annuals, they're less likely to have that really strong root system, so I would lead those.

- So even if you just planted them and they frosted a couple weeks later?

- Yeah, yeah.

I would try it.

It never hurts to kind of try to see what happens before you take a plant out.

Give it a week or two, see if you're seeing any new growth, and if you're not, then you can make a call then.

- Okay.

From Polson.

This person is curious about the county agent's interaction with grizzly bears in Choteau County.

They know that the Rocky Mountain Front range, the bears, the grizzlies, have moved out into the Prairie.

Have have you had any interaction with - Yeah, yeah, we have.

And we've had quite a bit of bear activity in Choteau and kind of all up and down Teton County and...

I received a great call, I guess it's been about a year and a half ago, and we formed a group called Teton Bear Smart.

And we did a project together and they've continued on.

In fact, they just did a bear fair yesterday where they taught people about bear fence and they did bear spray classes, especially for kids.

They've been very active and they just got a big grant, so they're a great group in town.

And they're really working on conflict prevention, you know, more than anything, and then of course conflict mitigation.

So they're exploring all the usual, you know, things.

Bear fencing for agricultural situations and also, you know, special trash cans and whatnot.

But actually what we did when they contacted me is we wrote a few grant applications and some generous donors provided money and we put up a, you know, very typical bear fence around the fairgrounds where we, you know, house the lambs and the swine during fair.

And I feel like, I felt it was like a timely thing, especially because we just had a grizzly bear encounter on Spring Creek, which the fair grounds is located on, you know, just two weeks ago.

So that was really fun.

And then we had an event, you know, to kind of show off the fence, and a lot of people came and checked it out.

We talked about the features that make it effective and... - Yeah, that's interesting.

And while we're on that subject, this question comes from me.

Predation on lambs and sheep, is that still a big, big issue in Montana?

- It is, yeah, especially, you know, we have growing numbers of large apex predators.

The bears are really expanding our personal operation, you know, and probably 30, 40 years ago, everybody just, even on the Fairfield Bench, the irrigated Fairfield Bench, we just turned the sheep out, left them out all night.

The emphasis has really gone towards non-lethal management anymore.

We still do have to remove some repeat offenders, you know, that get really aggressive on livestock, but, you know, we night pin everything, we run multiple guard dogs, which bring their own issues to us.

Motion sensor night lights, game cameras, thermal imaging.

So producers are spending really an enormous amount of money that doesn't get accounted for going to non-lethal management.

And there are some good programs out there that'll cost share some of those programs.

The Livestock Loss Board has a good grant program to try and reduce or mitigate those predation issues.

But, you know, most of the bigger operations in the state still have full-time herders that take the sheep up into the mountains.

But without the guard dogs that are out there, those big white dogs that you see, it would really be almost impossible in some areas to raise sheep.

You know, it's kind of interesting because we're finding different roles for them too.

So I'm also involved in the bighorn sheep, domestic sheep co-mingling project.

So one of the areas that we've heard from producers is, is that these livestock guardian dogs actually do a pretty good job of keeping separation between wild sheep and domestic sheep.

So that's one of the things that we're looking at now in that project too, so yep.

- Okay.

Have you had any problems with the grizzly bears in your area up there?

- We've had bears.

In the sheep, we don't think we've lost anything there, but we summer in the Blackfoot, same deal, we have electrified night pins ran guard dogs down there, have game cams out all the time just to see what's around.

I know last summer in July... And we work a lot with the Blackfoot challenge down there too, and they're good about notifying.

The neighbors are all kind and we have a text group that lets everybody know what's going on.

And I know we had seven grizz within five miles of the sheep last summer and didn't have a problem, so yep.

- That's good.

That's good to hear.

You know, that reminds me, you're in an area that there's a lot of honeybee production.

And I had a commercial honeybee producer or packer on here probably 5, 6, 7 years ago.

And he said at that time, black bears, and probably grizzlies too, will actually go into a hive, and not so much for the honey, but for the bees, the protein will stuff themselves.

What do they do about maintaining those hives in your county now?

- Yeah, we're doing quite a bit of hot wire.

Yeah.

Yeah.

- Hot wire?

And pretty effective?

- Yeah, I think so, yep.

- If you get enough charge on it.

- Okay.

I believe you.

Abi, from Hamilton, a bed of established lilies, they're not sure what species, they're the old fashioned orange ones, grows leaves every year but don't bloom.

Any thoughts on why this is occurring or how to fix it?

- That's a good question.

So when you have things that aren't blooming usually, pretty frequently, I like to kind of take a step back and start from the roots up.

So getting a soil test would probably be a really good idea to see if there's some sort of missing nutrients in there that could be impacting it.

Sometimes if you have an established bed, overcrowding can also impact flower production.

I had that happen to my irises, and I thinned them out, and they were more prolific with the flower production.

So maybe starting out with getting a soil test, seeing kind of if they're vigorously growing healthy, if they're really filled in those areas, trying to thin them out a little bit, giving them some more room to grow, that could help.

- Okay.

We have a question that we talked about ahead of time, and it's a Facebook question, so I asked you to bring in some information on it.

It's on downy brome, cheatgrass management.

You just did a program out at Red Bluff on that?

- Yep.

We have a picture of it.

We did a day out at Red Bluff, we had a field day that we organized, and we talked a lot about annual grass management when we went through it.

And we had Jane Mangold out there with one of her graduate students.

Lisa Rew was there.

And then we talked a lot about it too.

And one of the things that comes up is the economics of managing cheatgrass or downy brome on range lands.

And, you know, it's a tough thing when producers are paying money for fence and other things and stuff, and to manage that cheatgrass with herbicides, it's a tough thing to do.

So I was actually wondering, I wanted to ask Brent, how do we use cheatgrass better in our grazing systems to have this more holistic view?

Because it seems like the economics of getting out there and managing cheatgrass on range is pretty tough and utilizing some of that forage would be a better option for us.

- Yeah, as Noah Davis pointed out, well, on the last week, a lot of it starts, I mean, some of it starts with grazing management.

It's interesting.

Cheat grass, you know, it's starting to show up in areas where we don't even graze.

You know, it's just, it's so invasive.

There's currently a research project going on in Idaho where they have cheatgrass up at 9,000 feet on forest service.

- Wow.

- And so there's some researchers, if you just Google 'Cheatgrass Grazing Research Idaho Range Lands', they produced a really good video on it.

And so obviously they're a little sensitive, or the restrictions on using chemical on forest service or federal ground is, can be interesting to work around.

But they wanted to actually bring sheep back into that area and see whether or not they could control cheatgrass with sheep.

So they tried two grazing systems.

They tried an early grazing, they tried a late grazing.

So basically like a early spring grazing and then a kind of a late fall grazing, trying to hit that regrowth.

The big issue they have with grazing on forest service that 9,000 feet and trying to graze it early is trying to get ewes and baby lambs up there because they're using a local producer.

And so that can create some issues.

And it seems like the early, at least what the video talked about, was they probably had as much luck with the fall grazing.

It looks like the study's not done yet, but they were really impressed with the grazing in the fall.

A lot of times cheatgrass in the fall is one of the few things, especially if you don't get a lot of rain, that is green.

You get up there in the spring, like you talked about with grazing Russian thistle, there's a lot other things out there that might be a little more palatable.

I think that's what they run into in the spring.

It's a lot like grazing of knapweed.

If you go out there 4th of July, pre-4th of July for most of Montana before our grasses is in forms of (indistinct), or put their seed heads on, the sheep will really key in on stuff like Smooth Brome and Kentucky Bluegrass.

But after the 4th of July, especially in a bunch grass pasture, something that has a lot of Idaho fescue, Western wheatgrass, or things like that, a lot of times in Montana, from about the 4th of July through September, the only thing green out there is gonna be knapweed, and they start really hammering on it.

And so I think that's part of what that study's doing is trying to figure out the timing issue of when other things are less palatable when they basically are gonna seek out that cheatgrass and keep it from over wintering.

- Yeah, the cheatgrass out at Red Bluff now is in that stage where it's really soft, good moisture content on it.

Probably pretty good protein content on it.

Good time.

This is winter pasture that tends to be pretty weedy and so, yeah, it would be a good time to get in there and graze on it and before you start, before it develops the sharp ons that start giving you the pokes in the mouth that start to cause infections and stuff like that.

- Question from me, and I've always wanted to know this and here's a chance to find out.

The difference between crested, western, and intermediate wheatgrass.

I know crest is not highly thought of.

What about the other ones?

Which are the good wheatgrasses for pastures?

- Good wheat grasses for pasture?

It...

So it's kind of interesting.

Crested, you know, is an introduced- - Right.

- while Western is a native.

It depends on what you're using.

Sheep make very good use of crested wheatgrass, but you have to get on it early in the spring.

I mean, we start grazing crested on our place April.

We'll hit it.

And then if you get any fall moisture, which we don't seem like we get much fall moisture anymore, you can graze it in the fall too.

Sheep will eat Western wheatgrass.

It's not the most palatable species for 'em.

They really like more fine stem type.

You know, Kentucky bluegrass, smooth brome, Sandberg bluegrass, Junegrass, things of that nature.

Idaho fescue in the fall.

It seems like that's when they really like Idaho fescue.

And then they tend to use a lot more forbs than cattle do per se, so.

But they'll use Western if they have to, but not to the degree that cattle will use it.

- Okay.

I learned something, thank you.

From Helena, Tim, what's the difference between Russian thistle and Canada thistle?

- Ooh, that's a great question for my plant nerd brain.

So Canada thistle is actually in the daisy family.

It is part of, you know, it's closely related to safflower, the crop we grow, or things like that.

Russian thistle wouldn't, I wouldn't necessarily even call it a thistle.

It's in the amaranth family.

So it's more closely related to kosher and to lamb's quarters and quinoa and things like that.

So two completely different families.

Canada thistles, the daisy family, Russian thistles is actually from the amaranth family.

- Another name for locoweed, they want know.

- Another name for locoweed.

Astragalus is one of them and Oxytropis is the other.

Astragalus is actually one of the largest genera of plants in the world.

Biggest seed of its diversity that causes locoism is actually Afghanistan.

- Okay.

Do we have Astragalus in the state?

- Yep.

We have about 20 or 30 species at least, yep.

- And these are the highly poisonous ones?

- Yes.

You know, they can cause locoism, and maybe Brent knows a little bit more about how locoism functions, but I think a fungus actually has help meet the locoweed make the toxin that causes locoism.

- Yeah, and there's...

The astragalus is two or selenium accumulators, which can be another form of poisoning.

And so everybody looks out there and sees those flowers and they see that kind of fluffy looking leaf and they get really worried that they got locoweed, but there are a lot of Astragalus out there that aren't poisonous.

- Yeah.

- And so it's one of those weeds that if you have it, it's probably best to take it to your local county agent, let them send it to the Schutter Diagnostic Lab to get a plant ID on it just to see exactly what you're dealing with.

Yeah.

- Yeah.

- Okay, Abi, good question here.

From Bozeman, water rates are up.

I think people know that.

They are looking at a poten...

They're planting a yard and they're looking at a lower water or alternative to bluegrass.

- That's a good question and that's kind of been the theme in a lot of places around the state over the past couple of years.

Kentucky Bluegrass is one of those turf grasses that needs a lot more moisture than a lot of the others.

One of the first kind of steps is to look at your irrigation system.

So don't take that out of the equation when you're thinking about water management and also conservation.

But in terms of other turf grasses that are very similar, turf type tall fescues and fine fescues can use about 40% or more, like 40 to 50% less moisture than Kentucky Bluegrass needs.

And so those grasses, unless you're a grass nerd like Tim and looking down at them, most people will not notice the difference between those turf grasses and Kentucky Bluegrass in a landscape, but you will have higher water savings as a result.

- Thank you.

And that's very pertinent for Bozeman right now.

- Absolutely.

- And a question from your hometown.

- [Jenn] Hmm.

- This person has heard a lot about virtual fencing on this program and they would like to know is it being practiced in Teton County?

- You know, I am not aware of it if it is.

Yeah, I wrote an article about it a couple years ago.

I heard a great seminar on it, I went out and watched it in action.

And it seemed like it worked best when you have really large expanses and lack of accessibility and its tough defense and so forth.

And so I don't know anybody on a big scale doing it.

Do you know anybody?

- Not in Teton County.

We're using it on our guard dogs.

- Yeah.

- So it works.

There's some companies out there now that...

But in other areas, like Jenn said, it... You take like the Barthelmess Ranch up at Malta, they were really the ones that brought it into the state quite a few years ago.

And they've had a lot of experience with it.

I've got a neighbor down in the Blackfoot that's using it.

And it seems that where they're using it, they're using it on federal ground.

It's about a 10,000 acre allotment, fairly rough country.

They're using it to keep cattle out of certain areas and not so much in an area.

And so their battery life is a lot better using it that way instead of trying to do small paddock grazing, which takes a lot of, it burns through a lot of batteries, do an intensive grazing with large numbers, so yep.

- And batteries are 10, $12 a piece?

- I think they're 50.

Yeah they're, well, you don't even, yeah, you just, I think you exchange 'em, you just don't put new batteries in, yeah.

- So we had somebody from the Ranchers Stewardship Alliance a couple years ago talking about fencing costs.

- Yep.

- Do you have any theory about price of what a mile fence cost today?

- It's expensive.

- I know it's expensive.

It was 15,000 back then.

- Yeah, I was gonna say.

- And that's why everybody's- - 10,000 was a long time ago.

- looking at virtual fencing because of the cost.

I mean you run the cost on it and most people have gone the interior fencing a lot of electric fencing.

And the elk aren't as hard on those electric fence either as they are on some of the other fences.

We've talked a lot about it in the sheep industry because of the cost of herding and just bringing herders in.

It's a fairly large expense on those larger operations.

The big problem is they don't make anything specifically for sheep.

And so a lot of people, the producers that are playing with it, are using the cattle technology.

Well, if you figure six sheep to one cow, it gets, the price point is about 280 or $300 per ewe, which is pretty much the value of the ewe that you're spending on virtual fencing.

But the technology's evolved amazingly over the last, you know, at least the last 10 years.

It's come a long way.

And so hopefully, we'll keep progressing down that road.

- Yeah, it's early in its development, no doubt about that.

From Dillon, Abi, they're wondering if a transplanted sucker from a North Star pie cherry tree, if it would grow into a new tree?

- It depends.

So I had variable success with transplanting suckers.

You need to have a really good root system attached with it.

So if you have several inches of the root system that you take with it, you can try encouraging that to grow.

But oftentimes, when you have suckers, it's not really that healthy slow growth for a lot of our woody ornamentals that's really able to withstand the environmental condition.

Suckers are usually that panic response for trees to try and survive.

So they usually don't make the most robust or hardy plants in general.

- Okay.

Thank you.

For... We're getting down on time, but this is a quick question here for Jenn.

This person wants to know what's your favorite 4-H program?

- Hmm.

My favorite 4-H program.

- You better not say sheep.

(everyone laughing) - You know, I have to say it's not a program per se, but the fair itself, you know, is something that I find just so heartwarming, and it's such a small town, you know, good feeling thing.

And when I think about the number of people that pull together, you know, to get out there and support these kids who are raising livestock.

And it's a really, it's a mature thing to hold in your heart that, you know, this animal is food, and it's gonna nourish me, and I'm gonna send it to slaughter, and I just nourished it, and I got it tame, and I can handle it.

You know, and going through that whole process with everybody, I think, is my very favorite part of 4-H, yeah.

- I can believe that.

I would have a very difficult time being in 4-H and getting rid of my pet pig.

I mean... Yeah, there's no doubt about that.

And I raised hogs when I was young and they are very sensitive animals.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- Okay.

Quick question for Abi, and I think we can get through this one yet.

What is the difference between cool season and warm season turf grass?

- Yeah.

- Which is better?

- So there isn't necessarily one that's better than the other when you're talking about cool season and warm season turf grasses, but it depends on what you want to see.

So for our cool season turf grasses, that's most common, and that's because they really actively grow in the spring and the fall periods so they have a much longer time where they're nice and green.

But in the summer, they go dormant unless you have a lot of irrigation to keep them green.

For a warm season grasses like some of our native turf grasses like buffalo grass and blue grama, most of that growth is late spring and mid-summer.

So they're much more hearty in those warm or drought periods that we have in the summertime.

And so it just depends on what you wanna see and you can weigh those options.

- Okay.

Thank you.

We're down to under a minute, folks.

It's been another fun program.

Jenn, tell somebody why they wanna become a county agent.

(Jenn laughing) Quickly.

- If you like to learn and you like something new every day, become a county agent.

- You know what, they do a great job and people need to be aware of all the services that the county agents in this states do provide.

So with that, folks, we're down to the last few seconds to this evening's program.

Next week, we had Clain Jones scheduled for micronutrients in gardens and fields.

We're gonna shift that till spring.

Next week, we're gonna have a surprise guest.

Stay tuned and you'll find out who it is.

Next spring will be the last show of this season.

We'll start again in September.

It's been a lot of fun this evening.

All of you, thank you, especially Jenn, for coming down from Choteau.

Have a great week.

Good night, everybody.

Stay safe.

- [Jenn] Thank you.

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