The water conditions, are horrible.

This year, we had little to no snowpack or runoff.

The prairies are parched.

There's no real sub moisture down there.

The grass is drying up.

But right now they're eating all of their winter pasture.

Whats that calf number right there?

R18.

And what?

What is that count?

I always tell my husband, hes lucky he married a farmer's because I understand the long hours, the weekends, the holidays.

I mean, we never know when a cow is going to calf.

Well, we hope that God gives us the blessing of rain.

That would help tremendously.

we'll have to make we'll have to make accommodation for what we have to work with.

And you guys can se based on these numbers, cattle inventory is the biggest thing being impacted by drought.

Right now, 61% of our nation's cattle have been sold and are no longer in production.

They're gone.

That's a pretty big amount this early in the season, if you think about it.

Then it comes in... We are hosting our Pueblo County Drought Management workshop, which is hosted for Pueblo County producers, both, livestock and crop producers.

But we're also opening it up to our producers in El Paso, Huerfeno and to the east of us, as well as we're all facing similar issues with drought.

It's 100% of our community.

So it's not just u who are producers of any scale.

It's also all the consumers that work.

And then in our community, it's another extension director who's in the San Luis Valley.

But he's making the trip up to talk about the livestock side and when do you decide to sell cattle?

Because of there's no grass to do that with.

And there' supposed to be a hay shortage.

So how do you make those tough decisions?

What are your trigger points, It's a big decision.

And that data is really critical.

And then making decisions from Selling your cows off?

We've fought awful har on a large majority of our cows to keep cows acclimated to this type of country.

And we've followed genetic characteristics, We know what the genetics are behind our bulls that we purchased.

We only purchase some of the better grade bulls.

So sell them cattle off.

it's hard to get those quality of cattle that are used to this environment back.

Even if you try to buy them back, they won't be the same thing.

Our first plan of attack is to feed and try to eliminate selling cows as much as possibl outside of your normal culling character mistakes.

going to have to sell some cows.

I also farm, s my intentions are to try to grow some crops that are available to provide more feed to get us through the winter time.

Time will tell