- [Announcer] 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 and Landscaping, The Gallatin Gardeners Club, and the Montana Federation of Garden Clubs.

(upbeat music) - Guess what?

You're watching Montana AG Live originating today from the studios of KUSM on the very dynamic campus of Montana State University and coming to you over your Montana public television system.

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

Happy to be your host.

This is the last program of this year.

We'll be back in early May, I think, or March 15th next year with a gardening special.

We'll get to that a little bit later in the program.

You make this program happen with your questions.

And if you have questions tonight, don't be bashful, get on the phone, email 'em, Facebook, whatever method you'd like to use to get 'em to us because there are a lot of people out there who will probably be interested in the same question that you have.

Let me introduce tonight's panel: way on my left.

Uta McKelvy.

Uta is a plant pathologist.

She's gonna give us some hands-on experience with chickpeas this evening.

That's one of our specialties and honestly, chickpeas have become a huge crop in the state, and we'll get into that a little bit as we move through the program.

Our special guest tonight, Tim DelCurto.

Tim is department head at the Animal & Range Science Department.

It's a department that has really taken off and grown here over the last several years.

And we'll get into some of the things the department is actually doing for our animal and rain science here.

Jane Mangold, weed specialist, invasive plant specialist.

If you have any questions about weeds, especially noxious weeds tonight, and we still have a lot of 'em growing out there, so if you're actually want get some of 'em controlled yet, you might be able to do it yet this year.

- Maybe.

- Maybe.

- And of course Abi Saeed.

Abi is always happy to be here.

She's our extension horticultural specialist.

Answering the phone tonight.

Nancy Blake and Nynah Sy-dak and you've seen them both.

Thank you for being here.

Tim, I'm gonna turn it over to you.

Tell us what you do for the animal science department.

A little bit about what's going on.

- Well, I do a little bit of everything.

- [Jack] Yeah.

- I'm still the Nancy Cameron chair and specialize in range beef cattle, nutrition and management.

Starting in July, I took over, I don't know if took over is the right word, but I became the department head of the animal and range science department.

And yeah, our department's actually quite diverse and I think that's one thing that people don't realize about animal and range science.

We do everything from embryology to embryo implantations and the uterine wall to grazing ecology and wildlife ecology, and things like that.

So it's a fairly diverse faculty and things like that.

And probably the thing Jack and you touched on start the show is over the last 15 years we've doubled in size.

This fall we have record enrollment and probably our biggest freshman class ever.

So it's a growing department, lots of young faculty and things like that.

- I hear nothing but good things around the state about where you're going with your department.

- [Tim] Good.

- And we'll get into that a little bit more, but before we do one last plug this year for the Appreciation AG Week or AG Appreciation Week here.

And I wanna show you a picture of a combine and some of the activities that happen during the AG Appreciation Week.

So if we could have that picture come up on the screen, I think you'll get a kick out of seeing it.

So we'll get it up right there.

Chloe Hildebrand from Belgrade is a young lady standing in front of this small combine.

In the background, you'll see one of the hospitality tents that the AG Experiment station had during the AG Appreciation week.

I encourage people around the state join us next year for the AG Appreciation Week.

It's a lot of fun.

A lot of implement dealers throw their wares here.

I think you would enjoy it.

Uta, I'm gonna throw it over to you before I forget.

We've had questions all through the fall about people especially trying to irrigate chickpeas.

This person from Columbus sent in an email and wanted to know whether or not you can irrigate, which you can, chickpeas and is there a problem in doing so?

And you might explain what might happen.

- Yeah, so as a plant pathologist, irrigating chickpeas could raise the risk for certain foliar diseases, specifically ascochyta blight, and that's the sample here.

I'm not saying this was irrigated.

This is just a sample of beautiful ascochyta blight on chickpeas.

And so, let's see, I'm gonna try and show you here.

It forms these characteristic lesions on the stems, but also on the leaves and pods.

And in this case, I brought this sample because it has pretty severe infection of the pods as well.

I'm trying to find a good example for you, and so they're pretty characteristic.

You have these like black dots and target.

Nope, you can't see it on that one.

Sorry.

This one target shaped pycnidial fruiting bodies.

It's pretty characteristic, easy to identify.

What's tricky with ascochyta blight is that once you have like a really luscious chickpea canopy, it's really hard to penetrate that canopy with fungicides that are effective at controlling ascochyta blight.

So scouting and early identification of disease and intervention is really important.

And so irrigating chickpeas, especially later into the summer when we have that luscious canopy is going to really increase the risk for ascochyta blight.

And so that's not only going to, you know, cause stem breakage where you have these lesions on the stem and, you know, loss of foliage where you have these lesions on the leaves, but it can also go onto your seed and then into the next generation.

So not only is it going to, you know, reduce the value of your seed, but you might be forwarding this disease, and so it's really critical to pay attention to that.

I wanna elaborate a little bit more.

I guess one thing about irrigating chickpeas is they're not, what's the word?

Determinant.

So if they keep getting water, they keep growing, so you might have some issues with harvesting them or getting them to be able to harvest them.

So that's something to consider as well.

I wanna point out two things.

So we have a really helpful resource on Montana State campus, which is the regional pulse crop diagnostic lab where you can send your pulse seed for testing for seed transmitted diseases like ascochyta blight, but also other fungal diseases.

And so I would really wanna encourage pulse growers to submit their seed this year because what I've observed is we had in many parts of the state early drought and then like quite persistent rains in July and into August.

And so I know from the post lab that they have come across seed lots that have really high infestation rates with ascochyta, 40%.

Normally we're at like 0.2, 0.5, rarely over two.

We have lots with 40% infestation rate.

- So that is not seed you wanna plant and that's probably not seed you're gonna be able to sell for high value.

- Okay.

- The other thing I wanna point out, and then I'm gonna like make it a lot quicker in my future answer is that I actually just got a research grant from the Montana Specialty Crop Block Grant Program where we are going to look closer at emerging fungicide resistance and ascochyta blight.

So if you feel like fungicides that used to work for controlling ascochyta blight in the past and are not anymore, I would welcome you sending me a sample of seed or foliar tissue or plant tissue from the next growing season, and I would include it in our screening, and obviously report back to you what we found.

- Okay, thank you.

- Could I ask a quick, quick question?

- Oh, okay.

I'll try.

- That plant right there, like what time, when is that from?

Like was that August or like when do chickpeas get harvested and like when would that plant have been collected and sent?

- I mean, so this was collected pre-harvest actually.

I think August sounds about right.

It's been sitting in my lap for quite a while, as you can tell by the brittleness of it.

But I think, yeah, it's challenge with chickpea.

I think August sounds like the right time to harvest, but it can take even longer, you know, depending on if you get rains.

- [Jane] Yeah.

- How soon you can get out there.

Yeah.

- [Jack] Okay, thank you, and you can tell that you're a plant pathologist because you said that's beautiful ascochyta.

- [Uta] Yeah, sorry, I'm biased that way.

- Only a plant pathology.

- You would understand.

- Yeah, right.

Tim, a question came in from Warwick, it's an email question.

This person says the quarter horse industry in the state is huge.

- Yes.

- And they say is probably ranked fourth or fifth in the country.

What's your department doing in the equine area right now?

- Yeah, Jack, basically, yeah, the caller was correct.

And my numbers suggest we're the fourth largest state in the United States only behind California, Florida, and Texas.

And so that tells you a little bit about the magnitude of the industry.

It turns out equine science, we're going through a lot of changes with that, with a number of new faculty and support staff.

We're focusing on equine science production as it relates to production and management.

So, you know, it's, you know, a foaling class, a cul breaking class, you know, but as well as nutrition, reproduction, you know, breeding the whole works, but it's our probably that and animal science sciences are probably most rapidly growing programs.

- How many students?

I mean, when I was a kid I wanted a horse.

- Yeah.

- I was, you know, kind of got over that after a while (everyone laughs) they weren't that friendly.

But anyway, I migrated to golden retrievers.

They were easier to manage.

How many students are in the equine science curriculum?

- You know, it sounds like I'm making this up, but right at a hundred.

- [Jack] Wow.

- And that's up from about, I think, low 80s last year.

So it's a growing program.

- So somebody gets a bachelor's in equine science.

- [Tim] Right.

- What are their job opportunities?

- You know, it's funny, occasionally I hear there's not a lot of opportunities for degrees in equine science, but all you really have to do is go to a horse sell and look what a broke horse sells for right now.

It's probably 10,000 plus depending on the quality, and there's all kinds of jobs.

You know, you think about equine, the recreational aspect of the equine industry and all the products and all the kinds of things that go along with that.

There's actually a lot of jobs.

- Okay, so if a student wants to, there's plenty of opportunities for 'em.

- Oh, absolutely.

- Okay, sounds good.

Changing tune a little bit.

We're getting quite a few questions tonight, so keep 'em coming.

This person has never seen as many dandelions blooming this late in November.

I know you're a dandelion specialist, both of you.

- Well, I haven't noticed a dandelion flowering at all, have you, Abby?

- Not in a month or so.

It's been a little while.

- Yeah, do you know where they're the viewers?

- Choteau.

- From Choteau.

- Oh.

- Okay, wow.

I don't know.

We we're not seeing that in the Gallatin County area.

- Okay, let me throw a question at both of you.

Choteau has probably had, according to Jen Swanson, probably less than two inches of rain all year long.

Would that stimulate dandelions to try to reproduce late in the season?

Ah, I gotcha.

- Yeah, I don't know.

I mean, that's very low.

I don't even know if there's enough moisture.

Two inches is enough to stimulate dandelions, right?

Like, I don't know.

- They are deep rooted.

- I mean, with the top root they can access moisture that other plants can't.

But often I find with plants that are just trying to survive and they're on their way out, they're going to try and reproduce somehow, so.

- Yeah.

- I see that - It's also been a very extended fall.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- And I mean, I was out this afternoon walking around to get some samples and like you look down at the floor of the forest in our riparian areas, and there's a lot of green stuff, - [Jack] There's a lot green.

- And most of them are weeds.

- Okay.

- So you think about dandelions.

Like, weeds are weeds because they're really good at what they do.

So if the opportunity is there to grow.

- [Jack] They will.

- Like, they're gonna be the species that make a run for it.

- So while we're on dandelions, and this is throwing Tim a little bit of a curve ball, there's a lot of alfalfa fields here in the Galltin Valley and other areas that are predominantly dandelions.

- [Tim] Right.

- What's the nutritional value of cattle dandelions?

- You know, I was just about to say something when Jane was talking from a livestock perspective, dandelions aren't really a weed.

- [Jack] Okay.

- Because they're highly palatable, highly nutritious.

In fact, Jack, we've done some studies where the composition of diet, particularly like in May and June, and we find that dandelions are actually a preferred forage species, particularly for beef cattle.

- [Jack] I didn't know that.

- More so than our perennial grasses, which is striking - Early season.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- Okay.

Thank you.

Well, I didn't get a strike out on that one.

(panelists indistinct chatter) - No.

- Good answer.

- [Jane] He's gonna keep trying.

- Oh, I know.

- Just so you know.

- [Tim] He'll get you before the night's over.

- All right, this came in from Knox and I'm not sure we've had a call from Knox before, but this person wants to know how you identify a sugar maple and does it differ from a Norway?

And he's told we don't have sugar maples in the state.

- So they can look fairly similar to each other, but the way that their leaves are can be different.

So Norway maples have really pointed margins of their leaves.

So it seems like sharper where sugar maples have slightly more rounded, and also I find that the leaf size overall, like how filled out the leaf is for Norway maple is often a little bit larger.

You can tell the difference too from the bark.

Sugar maples have more of that furrowed or rougher bark and Norway maples have smoother bark.

But we do have some, I've seen sugar maples here and there, but one of the issues with sugar maple and why we don't plant them as much here is because they don't do really well in urban landscapes as an ornamental tree if you don't have really rich soils.

So they like really rich, nutritious soils.

They don't do well with too much salt.

They don't do well with too much compaction, which makes it tougher to grow them in urban landscapes and Norway maples will do okay in those types of environments.

So we don't see sugar maples planted intentionally in urban areas for that reason.

- You know, years ago, I tell you the exact year, 1983, all the young maples that grew here in Montana and Bozeman especially died because of a early harsh winter frost.

And at that time we started calling 'em the "no way" maples.

(guests chuckle) For a long- - They can be pretty, yeah- - Yeah.

- Pretty sensitive to the cold, yeah.

- And they can also be, Norway maple, can be invasive.

- Yes, that's true.

- I know Missoula, the city of Missoula has issues with Norway maples.

They get into the kind of the green belts and the wild areas in town, and can actually be pretty aggressive.

- Okay, thank you.

Tim from Manhattan.

This person is curious.

Our Montana backgrounding more cattle than they used to?

I think that's based on the price.

- Right.

Right.

That's a good question.

I don't know the exact numbers, Jack, but I think there's more interest in it and we're seeing growth not only in the backgrounding part of it, but also the feedlot end of it.

- You know what I should say, what is backgrounding?

A lot of urban people probably don't know what it is.

- Yeah, just so you know, the term backgrounding essentially just means taking wean calves, which are about 200 days of age, and then taking 'em up to a weight just prior to them going into a feedlot.

And one of the things, and it's changed a lot the last five years has been kind of a wild ride for our beef industry.

But right now commodities are cheap.

Corn's cheap, hay is cheap.

And so there's a lot of people interested in backgrounding.

So they might buy wean calves or take their wean calves background, growing to a higher weight because the feed is pretty reasonable right now.

- Yeah, very reasonable.

- But the price of these animals is all time high.

Yep.

- We got into this a little bit last week and somebody, I don't remember who on the panel said you could replace a cow for a couple thousand bucks.

- Probably a little low.

- Yeah, quite a bit.

What Brett Heifer today, what would that cost a rancher?

- You know, I think it all depends on the ranch and kind of what their expectations are.

But one thing I think people should realize is a Brett Heifer in the fall right at weaning is, is worth at least $2,000, and if it's quality genetics probably somewhere around $2,500.

So that's what a heifer calf is worth, and then to get it to the point where it's bred and confirmed pregnant, you're looking at really a year and a half.

And right now our enterprise budgets estimate that the average rancher has about $1000 per year into feeding, care husbandry.

So I think you're looking at Jack somewhere between four and $5,000 for Brett Heifer in terms of what their value is.

- That's why herds are not expanding rapidly.

- I think that's a lot of it.

Yeah.

I think they're just worse so much right now.

And the average age of our ranching industry is 58, and so they're not necessarily looking to expand and this is a good time to bank some money, and.

- Okay, good response.

Thank you.

So we created some interest here.

Clyde Park, St.

Ignatius billings.

Dandelions are blooming in all those locations.

- [Abi] Wow.

- So I guess it's not that unusual.

- Tell them they can grain 'em.

- [Panel] Yeah.

- [Abi] Or eat them.

- [Panel] Yeah.

- [Jane] Dandelion salad.

They're nutritionally equivalent to like arugula and spinach.

- [Abi] Yeah.

- I'm gonna throw another semi curve ball to Tim from Missoula.

The caller would like the guests to talk about the pork business in Montana.

What breeds are grown here and where can you buy local pork?

- That's probably the one thing our department's not exactly experts on.

We do have pork production here and a lot of that's associated with the Hutterite colonies.

You know, Jack, it's funny, the modern day pork industry really uses about six different breeds.

You know, Durocs, Hampshires, Yorks, you know, Landrace, Poland, China and all those things.

And so they're, they're really into cross breeding.

- [Jack] Okay.

- But the pork is available and like I said, the Hutterite colonies would probably be where I'd look for first.

- Is there anybody, I know we have a local processor or two for specialty pork products.

- Yeah.

- Are there some say outside, the Hutterite are they processing hogs?

- And I think some of the source of some of our local processors are, you know, in many cases the colonies.

Yep.

- Okay, Uta, from Kalispell they thought they had cedar apple rust on our apples this year.

Does that concern you or is there any concern that it might be spreading in the state?

- I would say it's already here, so it's not raising any alarm flags for me.

I mean, I'm excited.

I love to see the cedar part of it.

Again, plant pathologists coming through.

So it's a rust that as the name suggests, has two hosts.

So it switches between Cedars Junipers and so in the spring, if you have those kind of trees, bushes around nearby your apples, you can look for these skulls that are forming and they will exude these orange telial horns.

Beautiful.

Send me a picture if you see it.

And then from there it will go back to your apples.

And so you keep ping ponging it around and, you know, I don't think it's something that is really going to kill either a tree.

It's more a cosmetic issue, and then of course if either of those trees are struggling with other things, it could potentially be, you know, another, you know, nail in the coffin so to speak.

But I wouldn't worry too much about it.

Abi, do you have any?

- No, I think you nailed it.

- Yeah.

- That's exactly what I think.

- Oh, just don't spray for it.

It's beautiful.

- Okay, thank you.

From Townsend, this is a young lady who would like to possibly raise a 4-H calf.

Do you know of any programs that help kids get 4-H calves in the state?

- Jack, there's actually a lot of producers that raise, you know, calves specifically for that function.

So I'd tell her to just kind of look around and see in their area.

Actually in Townsend, I know of at least a couple families that will raise, some of 'em are pretty high end.

They refer to 'em as club calves, but you know, it depends on what level.

- So your phone number is on and if they want to find- - Yes.

- Out who these people are, they can sure give you a call.

- They certainly can.

Yeah.

- It's possible this person's already connected with the extension office in Broadwater County- - Broadwater County.

- But if not- - That's a good place to start.

- Reach out to- - Yeah.

- The Broadwater County extension agent.

- And then we have faculty and staff that actually judge a lot of the 4-H fairs.

4-H and FFA fairs.

And so they would probably know- - Okay.

- Who the producers are.

- Thank you.

Question... from... Lolo, and this one I'm curious about.

This person would like to get rid of mare's tail in pastures.

- Oh.

- Oh, I gotcha.

What's mare's tail?

- Well, I think they're referring to the conyza species.

It's actually a native summer annual that, so it's growing late in the summer.

- Okay.

- And it's in pasture, you said?

- That's what they say.

- But I don't know off the top of my head, but I do know that mare's tail, it does have some resistance to certain herbicides.

- Okay.

- So if this person has tried some herbicides and they're not working, it could be a resistance issue.

But, yeah, I feel like that's one I'd wanna have some follow up conversation with the viewer.

- Okay, thank you.

It couldn't be sage, could it?

That looks like- - Well there's, I'm thinking of horsetail or like scouring rush.

- [Jack] Yeah.

- It's possible it could be that, but there is mare's tail, so I mean I'm glad you brought that up.

If we don't know for sure what it is, let's get it ID'd, and, again, take it into the extension office.

They can help you with that.

And, yeah, if it's one of those two species I'm pretty sure the local office will be able to.

- Okay.

- Identify it.

Yeah, they're pretty common.

- We're gonna get back to you.

Last week we tried to show a picture of some minor deer damage on a maple.

So we'll have the studio bring that up, but before we do that, I have a question here from Helena.

He says he loves Japanese maple and understands that they're a zone five plant.

He sees many beautiful specimens in Helena, which is zone four.

What is a secret to growing Japanese maple in Montana?

I think warm.

- Yes, I think- - Climate change.

- If you have like a microclimate that keeps it warm enough.

If you have nice soils, they also like a little bit of acidity so they can become- they like some iron in there.

So I would say get a soil test or even ask, you see these nice specimens, ask people kind of where they source them from, and see if they might work.

But I find that it's tough to grow Japanese maples successfully in Montana.

They are marginally hardy in our landscape.

So unless you have a nice protected area, maybe they're sheltered from the wind, maybe facing in that south or western direction where they're getting a little bit more heat that could help and then overwintering them really well.

Lots of mulch around and protecting them from the wind, it's possible to get them to survive.

- I've seen some potted in quite large pots, which I'm guessing the people take 'em inside in the winter time.

- It's certainly possible.

- Is that, well one live a long time in a pot like that?

Or is it kind of have a shorter lifespan then?

- I would say it depends on, like, your nutrient management for that, but I've seen people successfully grow plants in pots for years.

I think you might outgrow having to drag that plant- - Yeah, right.

- Back in before you lose that 'cause it can get really heavy.

- Put it on wheels.

- Yes.

- You need like a pot with wheels.

- It's kind of interest.

I'm an animal scientist so I can't contribute to this much, but we have a Japanese maple we planted, my wife and I did, and it was really interesting 'cause it wasn't the most fertile soil.

The first two or three years it struggled, but we poured the water in, added soil compost, and tried, and it seems to be doing better.

- Yeah.

Great.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- Does your wife have a green thumb?

- Yeah, she does all the work.

- As an animal scientist.

- Yeah, I just watch her, yeah.

- All right, back to Tim.

This is a color from white sulfur as he of time in Bozeman and he is driving down south 19th and he noticed a big new livestock building.

You want to tell us what's going on there?

- Yeah, it's a lot more than a livestock building.

It will have our Montana State University wool lab in it.

- [Jack] Okay.

- Which one of the unique aspects of our department, but it also has a state diagnostic lab, and what's the other one?

- [Abi] A seed lab.

Was the seed lab in there?

- Could be.

Could be, but- - [Jack] It's in the old life building.

I don't know if it'd be in the new one.

- Yeah, so.

- [Abi] What about the veterinary diagnostic?

- Veterinary diagnostic and state diagnostic as well the wool labs.

So the wool labs obviously associate the university.

The other two labs are really state labs, but we certainly collaborate with, - It's a beautiful building.

I noticed it.

- Oh yeah, it really is.

- And they call it I think the Johnson family.

- Yeah, well, the Johnson Family Facility is just, I guess it'd be just south.

- [Jack] South.

Okay.

- Of where that new building's at.

- I see the big sign out there.

Several questions about fire blight and we've ignored it this year because we get it all the time.

And from Great Falls and Missoula and also Bozeman, they wanna know can, how do they identify fire blight at this time of the year on their various different apple trees and what can they do about it?

And I think we have a photo of fire blight from an email that we had last week.

So if we get that used as a photo up on the screen, what would we be doing about fire blight right now?

- [Uta] So, well, how to recognize fire blight right now as the trees have lost their leaves, it's pretty significant.

Fire blighted trees often keep the foliage on, so now you'll have like affected branches where you just have these blighted, So that's a easy way to tell right now, and I think right now as the trees are going dormant is also good time to prune out infected- - [Operator] Okay.

- Branches.

So you wanna- that might be a little harder to do.

You wanna prune, you know, eight to 10 inches below the canker.

So you'll have to have a closer look at that, you know, to recognize that.

And then obviously keep your tools disinfected so you don't spread it.

Do you have anything to add to fire blight and then I'll address the picture.

- No, I'd say like just scouting in the spring, and trying and removing it about eight to 12 inches below that.

- Yeah.

- Damage.

- [Jack] All right.

- And then, but the picture that we saw, I don't think that this is fire blight.

I think this is what we would call gummosis, which often comes up in food trees as a response to stress, often related to the environment.

Of course there could be diseases involved take advantage of the stress and exacerbate, but when you see your trees kind of like oozing bleeding, I would just take it as an indicator that obviously your plant, your tree's not doing well and then, you know, have a closer look at what the environment is that it's growing in and what might be missing, and, you know, Abi can talk at length to that.

Often it's, you know, not enough watering or maybe planted at the wrong place, at the wrong time, but the wrong depth.

All of those things.

And I hear you have a whole workshop around that.

(everyone laughs) - Okay, enough about fire blight.

- All right, Jack.

- I like this one for Tim.

- Oh.

- It's from Roberts.

Everybody know where Roberts is?

Yeah, there's a great steakhouse there.

- Stillwater County, it's like- - It's down by Red Lodge.

- Yeah, Stillwater, Carbon County.

- Beautiful area of the state, it really is.

This person has 220 cows on lush irrigated pasture.

He says it's four plus tons per acre, but his cows just walk the fence line and are discontented.

Well, they will go through a bag of minerals in two days.

Does Tim have a suggestion for this issue?

- Yeah, I think this is probably an issue where we take our extension back.

I think there needs to be a trip there.

You know, sometimes when the forage is really lush and green, it doesn't necessarily mean the mineral status that forage is gonna be good.

Sometimes it's actually diluted and then depending on the soil types, and things like that and water, yeah.

It may be something they need to look at, but.

- Okay, if we could bring up a picture of deer damage.

Abi wants to just tell you how to avoid deer damage without a 30 L six.

(Abi laughs) So if the studio could bring up the deer damage on a maple tree, it'd be great.

You can go ahead and start talking about it.

- Yeah, so this picture was shared by a friend of Tim Sy-pull and they had this damage and they wanted to know what to do about this type of issue.

And that is pretty significant damage at the base of that maple tree, and you can see kind of the tree guard didn't really do its job.

The deer just ripped it out and threw it next to the tree.

So I would say to protect your trees, use a tree guard that's gonna stay on.

So it could be like a chicken wire type wrapping that's tied on really well that won't be easily ripped off.

Those thin plastic material ones, they're easy to tear off.

You can also see the ones that wrap and they overlap in the wrapping.

It's harder for deer to get to those or you can use a fence about like a foot or so out from the tree that's tall enough to protect a majority of the bark.

So making sure it's well protected.

But when it gets to that stage where it has that damage, one of the best things that you can do is let that tree take care of that damage by making it easier on it.

So you wanna try and trim any of that shredded bark, use a nice sterile knife or pruners to prune out any of the frayed shredded edges, disinfect your tools so you're not passing in any diseases.

And that helps the trees better compartmentalize that damage so that they recover much better from it.

But if you have damage that looks like that, that goes all the way around the tree, it's hard to say if that tree's gonna survive.

Probably not because at that point you've kind of girdled that whole tree.

- It makes for good firewood.

- Yes, if the damage is severe enough.

- Okay.

- I'd like to point out there were no dandelions in the lawn in that picture.

So Abi and I aren't just out of our minds.

There aren't any dandelions around here right now.

- Okay.

- [Uta] Did you make out what kind of maple tree that was?

- No, I could not.

- I thought I saw the- - Yeah, no.

- Maple leaf leaves at the bottom.

- There were some kind of a maple.

- Yeah.

- Okay.

- So for that comment, I gotta throw you a nasty question from Lincoln.

How do you control bindweed in a yard?

- Oh, yeah.

You know what's working really well on bindweed and yards is Roundup for lawns.

It has, I think it's the quinclorac in there that works really well on bindweed.

- Good.

- Wow.

- I got an answer for you.

- I'm impressed.

Okay, and that is a tough weed.

- Yes, so we've talked about this before on the show.

There are multiple Roundup products.

- Yes.

- So make sure you're looking for Roundup for lawns.

- Right.

- 'Cause it has the active ingredient in there that will work well on field bindweed.

- Okay, we've talked a little bit about deer.

This caller from Helmville understands that the Department of Animal Science and Range is also working on some sheep and bighorn sheep interactions.

- [Tim] Yes.

- You have a research project, I think.

- [Tim] Yep.

- You wanna expound on that a little bit?

- Yeah, Dr.

Jared Beaver, our extension wildlife specialist and Brent Roeder, our sheep extension specialist, have actually obtained a rather large grant, and that's looking at the interaction of domestic sheep and bighorn sheep and really kind of looking at ways that we can mitigate the potential of between the two species.

Part of that's just understanding their behavior and the likelihood that they may co-mingle it at certain times.

And we're, Jack, you know, it is kind of flipping the subject.

We're doing similar kinds of things with Rocky Mountain Elk and beef cattle in regard to brucellosis - Brucellosis.

- Yeah.

- We're not a brucellosis free state anymore, are we?

- No, no, I know that question came up last week, and I was cringing when they were talking about it.

No, we're not, and in fact, right here in Bozeman, we're in what's called the designated surveillance area.

- Okay.

- And the reason why it, it's kind of a, yeah, I could probably talk a lot about this and I probably shouldn't, but, you know, the brucellosis problem, everyone goes, well they started with the bison.

Well, they really didn't actually start with the bison.

They actually started with some of our early ranches, you know, a hundred years ago that were taking care of bison to make sure they didn't go extinct.

And so the bison originally got it from the cattle.

And so that's how the bison got up.

And I think over time we've developed pretty good management strategies for ranchers around bison herds, and so we can manage that pretty well 'cause bison's not a migratory species, but now our rocky mountain elk population is picked up brucellosis from the bison and they're a little different.

They migrate a lot and they move a lot.

So that's the DSA is the whole effort there is to contain that kind of problem, and you can't sell any breeding stock or you can't market anything if you're within the DSA unless you test all your animals prior to transporting out of it.

- Okay, yeah.

It's always a hot topic.

- Oh yeah, yeah.

- You know, speaking of livestock, I like to promote a few things here.

One is the Montana Stock Growers Association.

I'm actually a plant pathologist by training, but I do belong to the Stock Growers Association.

They have a lot of information.

They have a weekly email.

You can get an associate membership for $75.

They do a wonderful job.

They have a meteorologist that is top of the world.

The other group that I also belong to is a Rancher Stewardship Alliance, which is based outta Malta, Montana, and this is a really active, very conservation oriented group.

And one thing I've noticed over the last 30, 40 years I've lived here in Montana, ranchers have really improved- - [Tim] Yeah.

- Their conservation and their management of their lands.

So you might want to touch on that a little bit.

- Yeah, you know, I think they've always been pretty good at it, Jack, they just never got credit for it, you know?

- Yeah, I agree.

- One of the things I've found, it's really funny, you know, you read lots of things and if you don't understand the beef cattle industry, you might get an opinion that's just not very accurate.

You know, one of them is they always go, well, 70% of our ranches are corporations.

- Yeah.

- Which is true.

But almost 80 of that 70% is family corporations.

And they do that to help with transitions from generation to generation.

So they're taking kind of terms and most of our ranches here in Montana, you know, they're fourth and fifth generation ranches, and the last thing they wanna do is do something that's gonna hurt the future generations and really even hurt what production might be next year.

And so, yeah, they're interested in water quality, they're interested in plant biodiversity, wildlife, you know, the whole works.

- Style growers have a environmental stewardship award style growers foundation every year.

I've been fortunate to be able to attend the last three or four of those.

- [Tim] Yeah.

- It's a great program.

And these ranchers, I've had several of 'em on the program here, matter of fact.

You wanna mention a little bit about how you might apply for that award?

- Yeah, I, you know, obviously I think if you feel like you're doing something on your ranch that, you know, warrants that kind of recognition.

You know what I'd probably do, almost, you know, most of our state will have county or regional organizations, you know, mentioned to leadership of that and make sure that that gets passed on to the state stock growers program, but yeah, I think it's great.

And it's funny that people who receive that word are thrilled to death.

- Oh, yeah.

- You know, it's a big deal to 'em.

- Yeah, no, it's great.

And I, we've gotten into this a few times about grass fed beef and we actually out the last years Polson awardee.

They serve grass fed beef that was absolutely delicious.

- Yeah.

- But they finish it on grass.

- Yeah.

- [Jack] They just don't graze it on grass.

- Yeah.

- Which is different.

I have another question here.

In fact, we got a bunch of questions we gotta get to in a hurry here.

This person is no longer interested in because of the price.

Understood, but he's up near Conrad.

He wants to plant it back to grass and get into the cattle business.

He'd like to know what is the preferred grass to plant and to the pasture business.

- Yeah, I can probably defer to Jane, you know.

I think there's a lot of them, you know, there's all kinds of wheat grasses and depending on your precip level and things like that, I'd recommend that.

More and more we're finding out whenever you can have a lagoon, whether it's native lagoon or an introduced dry land lagoon.

I'm assuming this dry land pasture.

- [Jack] Yeah.

- Yeah, those work actually quite well for a variety of reasons.

They're deeper rooted, they fix nitrogen, things like that.

So wheat grasses, you know, Timothy's Orchard Grasses there, there's a number of 'em that work.

But a lot depends, you know, what's your precip level, you know, what grass is gonna take?

- [Jack] Which ones to stay away from other than probably crested wheat grass.

- (chuckles) You know, I'm actually not one who would bad mouth crested wheatgrass.

- Okay.

- A lot of people do.

- Yeah.

- And I think part of it's crested wheatgrass you have to manage and if you don't graze it and actively graze it and keep it under control, it become quite woofy, and so.

But if you have it's something you can graze early.

You can also graze later in the season with precip and it tolerates grazing quite well.

Whereas some of our native plants here auto-e-fes-cue, blue bunch of wheatgrasses quite a bit less tolerant.

So you have to be much more careful about how you do them.

- Alright, sounds good.

Another one, and then I'm gonna move on.

Well, let me do Shepherd first.

They had a horrible hail storm in June.

Had extreme damage on both deciduous evergreen trees.

What's their chance of surviving the winter?

And I do know it was a very severe storm.

- Yeah, we had a really tough time this summer with hail, especially in the south central Montana area.

It's hard to say what survival will look like.

It just depends on the extent of the damage.

So this is that waiting game.

Waiting to see how well these plants survive over winter, what they look like in the spring.

The best thing that you can do is make sure that they are as healthy as possible going into winter so that they're not water stressed or any other issues affecting them.

Making sure that they're getting a nice deep watering around now before the ground is fully frozen so they are not more susceptible to the drying out and winter injury as a result of that.

And then just waiting and seeing how they look in the spring and the summer next year.

It's hard to say.

- Okay, thank you.

I should have had this question last week when we had our meat scientist on, but you're close enough so you're going to get it.

It comes from Missoula and this caller wonders why you can't find pork liver in the grocery store anymore.

What is being done with the pork liver now?

And it's an interesting question.

I personally grew up with pork liver.

It's delicious.

Is there a reason why we can't find it?

- I have no idea either.

- Okay, so we don't know.

But you know what, call Jane Bowles.

- Yeah, yeah.

- And Jane can answer that question, no doubt about that.

Comment from Bozeman.

They just pulled a bunch of flowering dandelions after a long, near the hospital in the last few days.

- We need, apparently, I'm looking at the wrong weeds because I'm seeing other things green, but, yeah.

- Okay, so we do have a dandelion issue this fall.

Tim.

- Yes.

- Tell us a little bit, and we had a chart if we can bring it up of some of the new programs that the department is focusing on.

So if we can have that chart come up, you brought it in with you.

- Okay.

- I think expand on that a little bit.

- Yeah, yeah, you know, I think one of the questions we always give, well, what kind of degree programs do you have?

And this sort of, I'm gonna have to put my glasses on because I can't see all this.

And what you see in this pie chart there, the blue part is animal science equine, and that's roughly 23% of our students, which equates to, we have 431 undergraduates right now and about 35 graduates.

But the, we have a hundred animal science equine students in the rest of the pie chart.

We can probably, we have animal science production management and those are a lot of times ranch kids that, you know, want to go back to the ranch.

We have 145 animal science science.

And everyone goes, well, why do you go, why do you call it "animal science science"?

Well, those students are interested in sort of the science aspects of animal production.

A lot of 'em are considering vet school, some of 'em are considering graduate programs or, you know, reproductive kinds of things.

The ranching systems is in purple.

There is actually our Dan Scott program.

- Yeah.

- That's relatively new.

That's only 10% of our students.

But or actually it's 10% represents about 45 students, which for that program's just about perfect because it's a gated program.

We only take a limited amount for the junior and senior years.

And then the other two degrees is rain science and wildlife natural resources.

And so that's anywhere from range ecologies to habitat management for wildlife, but as it relates to agriculture, particularly ranching and private range lands.

So very diverse program.

A lot of students, and it's growing quite a bit.

- So earlier in the program, we mentioned that your department has basically doubled over the last several years.

- [Tim] Yeah.

- What are some of the new hires and what are they working on?

- Yeah, you know, I think probably that's probably one of the biggest things we've been working on is we've had a number of retirements in recent years, and so we're in the process now of refueling them.

We had three new scientists starting in August.

An equine scientist that's a new position just because of growth in the equine program.

That's Dr.

Carol Vasco.

We have a new room and nutritionist Dr.

Will Cuervo.

And Will's kind of a classic remnant, nutrition microbiology person.

And then our third position's, Georgia Harrison.

I don't know if Jane, if you've met Georgia.

- [Jane] Yeah.

- But she's a range ecologist.

We have a fourth one that will start in January and then two more that we hope to start next.

The fourth one in January is actually my current PhD student, Noah Davis.

And he'll defend next week and so hopefully start in January.

To be honest, Jack, these are some of the brightest young people.

I'm really excited about these people.

- And I said earlier, I know I get around the state just enough to hear people say that it's really made a difference.

That area of emphasis has just come up on the screen.

That's basically what you were talking about.

- Yeah.

- Okay.

From Drummond, and this is yours too, Tim, important comment for the panel.

Regarding the caller whose cows won't eat lush pasture.

Caller recommends putting out a bale of hay or straw and cows may need some dry matter.

Does that make sense?

- Yeah, particularly if this collar was talking about early spring forage.

You know, I think one of the things they don't realize, it's highly nutritionally dense, but it's also really high in water.

So early lush growth, like in May, early May, could be as much as 80%, 85% water and very little fiber.

And so in that case, if you could add just a filler, some straw, things like that.

Slow down passage, things like that could be beneficial.

- Okay.

Sounds good.

Did we learn something again here?

Codling moth.

We've had several questions about codling moth.

When's the best time to control it and how prevalent is it in the state?

- It's pretty prevalent in the state.

So if you see those holes in your apples with a bunch of that, like, debris coming out of it, that's frass.

It's pretty prevalent.

In terms of the best timing, we have a few resources.

So one is called the Utah Pests kind of tracking website.

And so if you go to the Western AG Research Center webpage and type in codling moth, you can click on that link and it tells you based on the timing of the year where codling moth are emerging.

So you wanna time it around the time where you're going to be able to get the susceptible stages of those codling moth, and you may have to keep up with that spray schedule through the year.

So one of the best things might be to contact your local extension agent.

They'll be in tune with the timing of application and they are pretty prevalent, and most people do need to do some sort of codling moth control on their apples.

- Or make cider out of it.

- Or make cider out of it.

Yeah, that's classic worm in the apple extra protein.

But if that's not your thing, then.

- Yeah.

- You might wanna find something else.

- I haven't been ignoring you Jane, what have you got here?

We've got a couple minutes left.

You wanna tell us what you've got here that looks like it's edible, but I doubt it.

- Yeah, it's not.

So I brought in tonight common buckthorn.

It is on the state noxious weed list.

It's a woody, invasive.

Looks a lot like choke cherry.

Has these purple berries on it.

They are toxic.

Not so much like they're gonna give you diarrhea, they give birds diarrhea.

They're not as toxic as like white briny, but one of the reasons I brought this tonight is because if you go into riparian areas, this is one of the last woody species that still is holding its leaves.

- Yeah.

- And it shows up.

It's really easy to see this time of year.

I brought a couple bigger leaves.

It has very distinctive veins on the leaves.

You'll have three to five sets of veins and they curve up towards the tip of the leaf.

I'm not sure if we're picking that up.

There's a nice picture.

But you'll see how it, they're curving up towards the tip of the leaf.

You also see the little thorn on the tip of the twig.

So that's what you wanna look for.

Those curbing leaves, of course the purple berries.

And then, again, this time of year is a great time to scout for this species because it's going to be the last remaining tree or shrub that's holding its leaves and it's invasive in our riparian areas.

- I see it all over.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- It was introduced as an ornamental and has escaped cultivation, especially when it gets into these kinda wild green belt areas.

- [Abi] That's a classic story.

- It is.

Yeah.

- Quick question, we're getting down on time.

Uta, quickly, with all the green grass still, what's the potential for snow mold if we ever get snow?

- Yeah, I'd say fairly high.

I think what the key is, because it's still so warm, you wanna keep mowing it to some degree, right.

The longer your grass plates are as they're being buried under snow, eventually the higher the odds of it, you know, them becoming affected by snow mold.

So just keep mowing.

That's what I tell my husband.

Keep mowing.

(everyone laughs) - That's worth, though.

Tim, quick question.

This person wants to know, do you have tours of the animal science building and if people would like to meet with the faculty, is that possible?

- Absolutely.

Yeah, we basically have a walk-in policy that come to ABB, you know, anytime.

We also try to have tours of our Bard farm, which is right here at the edge of campus.

If they're interested for pore-lysis is kind of where we do a lot of our sheep work.

And then we also, on occasion we'll do our Red Bluff Research Center, so - Okay folks, end of another year.

It's been, I think, 32 years we've been doing this program.

The panel's changed through the years.

A lot of us grown fatter and older, but I guess that happens.

Anyway, we'll be back starting March 19th.

No, 15th.

- 15th.

- 15th.

I think you'll see reruns on PBS on Sunday morning at 11 o'clock if you wanna watch that.

Thank the panel tonight.

Tim, it's been a pleasure.

You're always welcome here.

Hope to see you again next year and I'd like to meet some of your new faculty and invite them to be on the program.

So with that folks, you have a good winter.

We do need some snow here.

Things are pretty dry and, fortunately, the long term forecast is that we are supposed to get some snow.

So start praying.

We need it.

The ski season is gonna be late this year, so thanks for watching this year.

Have a good week.

Good night.

See you again.

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