Colorado Winter Wheat and Hay Stocks

Here with May's NASS Crop Production Report is Mountain Region's Public Affairs Specialist Terry Matlock who provides more details on the state highlights for the winter wheat crop.

Colorado's winter wheat production is forecasted to be 72 million bushels of production, that is 31 percent below last year of 105 million and 11 percent below the 2015 total of 81 million. Our acreage planted for winter wheat this year is 1.95 million acres which is 240,000 acres less than last year. Our forecasted yields are 37 bushels per acre, which will be down 11 bushels from last year. Of course all of these forecasts are based off of the May and June moisture and temperatures so hopefully we get some good weather. Winter wheat conditions right now are 37 percent fair and 57 percent good to excellent compared to last year we had 23 percent fair and 65 percent good to excellent. So we are a little behind on the condition also."

Matlock continues with hay stocks on Colorado Farms and ranches as of May first.

Matlock: "We're at 500,000 tons which is down from the 800,000 tons of last year. The production for 2016 of hay was 3.57 million tons and that was 17 percent lower than the 2015 production."