Southwestern Colorado Beef Symposium highlights forages, climate change

2026/01/29 | Colorado: Montezuma Co.

Southwestern Colorado Beef Symposium highlights forages, climate change

This is the driest winter on record.

By Matt Barnes

The Southwestern Colorado Beef Cattle Symposium, hosted by Colorado State University Extension - Montezuma County, covered economics of the cattle and hay markets, best practices for calving, management of forages, tools for tracking and predicting the weather, and an update from the USDA Farm Service Agency. I especially enjoyed the talk on forage management by retired forage specialist Dr. Joe Brummer, who I’ve known for twenty years.

I also enjoyed the talk on using weather information for management decisions, by a freshly minted PhD in atmospheric science. The southwest has been in a megadrought since about 2020, long enough to be the new normal. Last year, 2025, was the warmest on record here on the western slope. This winter, 2025-26 so far, is Colorado’s driest ever (as of last week, 58% of normal snowpack statewide). This is correlated with the La Niña phase of the El Niño - Southern Oscillation (ENSO); the latest prediction is for a transition to ENSO-neutral in late winter, and possibly El Niño conditions in the summer. So, this will likely remain one of our driest winters ever, but there may be some relief in the summer monsoon. But, most of our forage resources are cool-season grasses, which depend on snowmelt and spring rains; warm-season grasses, which depend on the monsoon, are a minor component of the grass community in southwest Colorado.

The event was organized by County Director and Agriculture Agent Emily Lockard, who specializes in range and animal science, and held at the Yellow Jacket Livestock Auction. People came from throughout the Four Corners region, including a large contingent from the Navajo Nation.