Captive on Arrival: How Far We Can Trace Montana’s Cattle Through the Captivity Tiers

This is the third in the Honest Cattle research series built from the Montana Department of Livestock 2023 FOIA brand-inspection release. Prepared with the assistance of AI.

The first paper in this series — Where Montana’s Cattle Went in 2023 — established that 60.8% of Montana’s inspected cattle left the state in 2023, and where they went. The second paper — Where Montana’s Cattle Land — profiled the five states that bought 62% of those out-of-state shipments. This paper attempts a harder question: once we know which state a Montana steer is headed to, can we say which captivity tier of feedyard he ends up in?

The framework comes from a sister paper at Farm Animal Transparency: Captive in Practice. It defines four captivity tiers for any commercial feedyard:

1. Ownership-captive — packer-owned (JBS Five Rivers) or large corporate-chain (Cactus Feeders, Friona Industries, Adams Land & Cattle, Simplot, Pinal, Bar-G, Champion).
2. Geographic-captive — exactly one Big Four / key independent plant within 50 miles. The yard\’s freight economics make cross-shopping irrational.
3. Remote — no plant within 50 miles. The yard bears a freight penalty against every packer regardless of choice.
4. Multi-plant choice — two or more plants within 50 miles. The yard can credibly cross-shop in any given week.

Tiers are mutually exclusive; ownership wins over geography. Contract-based captivity (formula and forward contracts via grid pricing) is a fifth dimension that is structurally captive but invisible to public data because contract relationships are private.

The methodology and its honest limit

To run a flow-weighted captivity analysis on Montana cattle, three data layers have to line up:

1. Montana origin → destination state flow. We have this from the 2023 FOIA release: 990,376 head moved out of Montana in 2023.
2. Destination state’s commercial feedyard population, with capacity and geographic location for each yard. This is where the data gets thin. Comprehensive public yard directories exist for Kansas and Nebraska. They do not exist in equivalent form for the other ten states and one province that received Montana cattle.
3. For each yard, ownership classification (corporate name match) and geographic classification (count of Big Four / key independent plants within 50 miles).

Where all three layers exist (NE, KS), we can compute a real flow-weighted distribution. Where only ownership data exists (TX, CO, ID, AZ — corporate yards documented on company websites), we can compute a lower bound on ownership captivity. Where neither exists in the public domain (SD, WA, IA, WY, MN, ND, AB), the captivity tier of inbound Montana cattle is simply not knowable from public sources.

That is itself the headline finding of this paper. So before the numerical analysis, the result that matters most:

Of Montana\’s 990,376 head shipped out of state in 2023, public data can tier-classify approximately 31%. The remaining 69% disappears into destination states whose feedyard populations have not been comprehensively mapped in any public dataset. This is the transparency gap that any honest accounting of Montana cattle marketing has to start by acknowledging.

Where data is good: Nebraska, the largest market

Nebraska took 212,356 head from Montana in 2023 — the single largest destination state. The Nebraska Cattle Feeders Directory plus FAT\’s manually-added corporate yards give us 122 mapped yards covering ~1.48M head of capacity (about 60% of the state\’s ~2.4M head December 2025 inventory — solid coverage). The capacity-weighted captivity tier distribution within Nebraska:

Tier	Share of NE capacity	Allocated MT head
Ownership-captive (Adams Land & Cattle, Gibraltar Feedyard)	11.5%	24,354
Geographic-captive (1 plant within 50 mi)	19.3%	41,000
Remote (0 plants within 50 mi)	52.7%	111,933
Multi-plant choice (2+ plants within 50 mi)	16.5%	35,069
Captive subtotal (ownership + geographic)	30.8%	65,354

Within Nebraska, then, roughly one in three Montana cattle lands in a yard that is either packer-owned or geographically captive to a single packer. About one in six lands in a yard with credible cross-shop ability. The largest single group — 53% of capacity, 112,000 Montana head — sits in the remote tier, far enough from any plant that freight economics flatten the bargaining position regardless of which packer the yard sells to.

This is, importantly, a capacity-weighted allocation. We don\’t know which specific Nebraska yard each Montana load went to. The assumption is that Montana inbound is distributed across Nebraska yards roughly in proportion to yard capacity. That is a reasonable first approximation given that buyer activity tends to scale with operational size, but it is an approximation. A perfect analysis would require yard-level destination data that is not in the FOIA release and probably does not exist in any public source.

The Kansas micro-case

Kansas is the second well-mapped state. Its 2026 Annual Feedlot Report covers 255 yards totaling 4.69M head of capacity — extremely good coverage. But Kansas is a small Montana destination: only 33,270 head in 2023, less than 4% of out-of-state flow. The Kansas tier distribution is informative as a comparison case but not material to the Montana-flow conclusion.

Tier (Kansas)	Share of KS capacity	Allocated MT head
Ownership-captive	7.8%	2,602
Geographic-captive	22.6%	7,521
Remote	37.9%	12,605
Multi-plant choice	31.7%	10,541
Captive subtotal	30.4%	10,123

Kansas\’s captive subtotal — 30.4% — comes in remarkably close to Nebraska\’s 30.8%. Kansas has a higher multi-plant-choice share (31.7% vs 16.5%) because the southwest-Kansas plant cluster (Cargill Dodge City, Tyson Holcomb, National Beef Liberal) is the single densest fed-beef plant geography in the country. Nebraska has more truly remote feedyard country in the Sandhills.

The convergence around 30% captive between two states with different dominant operators and different geographies is a useful signal: that share is not a Nebraska-specific artifact. It is the rough order-of-magnitude that any sufficiently well-mapped Corn Belt feeding state appears to produce.

Where data is partial: the named-yard inventory

For Texas, Colorado, Idaho, and Arizona we have ownership-tier yards (the corporate chains documented on company yard pages) but no comprehensive independent-yard population. Within those states, we can compute a lower bound on Montana cattle landing in named captive operations:

• Colorado (65,503 MT head): JBS Five Rivers operates Yuma Feedlot (125K), Kuner (98K), Kersey (92K), and Gilcrest (60K), totaling 375K of named ownership-captive capacity. Against an estimated CO inventory of ~1M head on feed, the implied lower bound is ~24,500 Montana head landing in JBS Five Rivers yards. This is a floor; many additional Colorado yards have marketing agreements with JBS or Cargill that aren\’t visible in the ownership data.
• Idaho (66,549 MT head): Simplot Land & Livestock\’s Grand View Feedlot (150K) is the dominant named captive. With ID\’s estimated 300K head on feed inventory, the named ownership lower bound is ~33,000 Montana head — about half of the entire Montana → Idaho flow. AgriBeef\’s Beef Northwest in Boardman, Oregon, captures additional MT volume that crosses Idaho but is finished in Oregon.
• Texas (9,431 MT head): Five Rivers (Wrangler, XIT, Hartley, Coronado, Idalou) and Cactus Feeders (multiple yards) and Friona Industries dominate the corporate-yard footprint. Against the Texas Panhandle\’s ~2.6M head inventory, MT\’s 9K-head Texas flow is small enough that the per-yard allocation is noise.
• Arizona (negligible direct MT flow): Pinal Feeding (150K) and JBS Five Rivers McElhaney (80K) are the named captives. Most Arizona feeding is for cattle from Mexico and the southwest rather than Montana.

For these partial-coverage states we count only the lower-bound ownership share toward our flow-weighted total: 88,102 head of Montana cattle (8.9% of out-of-state flow) confirmed in ownership-captive yards across NE + KS + CO + ID + TX. The geographic tier in these states is unknown from public data.

Where data is absent: the 69% problem

For South Dakota (183,941 MT head, 18.2% of out-of-state flow), Washington (84,655), Iowa (76,230), Wyoming (73,105), Minnesota (65,668), North Dakota (55,298), and Alberta (41,315) — and several smaller destinations — no comprehensive public feedyard directory exists at the level needed for tier classification. State-level feeder associations vary widely in disclosure practice. Some states publish active yard lists; some publish only county totals; some publish nothing.

This is not a small data gap. It is 603,267 head — 60.9% of Montana\’s entire out-of-state flow — in destinations where we cannot say what tier of yard the cattle land in. That includes the second-largest destination state (South Dakota) and the entire Pacific Northwest corridor.

What we can credibly conclude

Three findings are robust enough to defend at this data quality:

1. In the two well-mapped Corn Belt destinations, roughly 30% of Montana\’s inbound cattle land in ownership- or geographic-captive yards. This is consistent across Nebraska (30.8%) and Kansas (30.4%). Extrapolating that share to the full out-of-state flow — with appropriate caution — would suggest roughly 290,000–300,000 Montana head per year landing in directly-classifiable captive structures, plus an unknown share in contract-based captivity that is structurally invisible.
2. Idaho is unusually concentrated. Simplot\’s 150K-head Grand View operation alone could absorb roughly half of Montana\’s 66K-head Idaho flow, producing the highest documented single-state ownership-captive share for any Montana destination. Producers shipping to Idaho should treat that concentration as a real bargaining factor.
3. The biggest finding is the gap. The 69% of Montana\’s out-of-state cattle that land in unmapped destination-state feedyard populations is itself a structural transparency problem. The Department of Livestock\’s 2023 release was an important first step. The next step is destination-state yard disclosure — either through expanded LMR coverage that names yards rather than just regions, or through state-level feeder-association reporting that matches the Kansas Annual Feedlot Report and Nebraska Cattle Feeders Directory templates that already exist.

What this changes for the Montana producer

Two implications, both modest enough to act on without overstating what the data supports:

• Within Nebraska and Kansas, the ~30% captive share is high enough that channel selection matters. A producer who knows their Corn Belt buyer is an Adams Land & Cattle, a Gibraltar, or a Friona-owned yard is shipping into a structurally captive destination. The premium and bargaining trade-off may still be worth it, but the choice should be made knowingly. A producer whose buyer is one of the multi-plant-choice yards (the southwest-Kansas plant cluster, the Cargill-Schuyler corridor in eastern Nebraska) is in a structurally less captive market.
• Idaho-bound cattle are flowing into a structurally concentrated buyer market, even if the per-cwt prices look attractive. Producers shipping west should weigh that concentration against the verified-natural-program premiums that the PNW corridor is willing to pay. The corridor is real and the premiums are real; the buyer concentration is also real.

Methodology and Data

• Flow data: Montana Department of Livestock BE-10 brand-inspection records, calendar year 2023, FOIA release March 2026. 990,376 head shipped out of state.
• Yard population data: FAT supply-map dataset — Kansas Annual Feedlot Report 2026 (255 yards), Nebraska Cattle Feeders Directory (120 yards), JBS Five Rivers public yard pages, Friona Industries, and 12 manually-added corporate-chain yards from company-website sources (Adams Land & Cattle, Simplot, Pinal Feeding, additional Cactus Feeders and JBS Five Rivers yards). Comprehensive coverage in KS and NE; partial coverage (corporate yards only) in TX, CO, ID, AZ; no coverage in SD, WA, IA, WY, MN, ND, AB.
• Plant network: 28 active Big Four fed-beef slaughter plants plus 5 key independents, current as of January 2026 (reflects Tyson Lexington NE closure).
• Tier classification: per the FAT four-tier framework. Ownership classification by yard name match against documented corporate operators. Geographic classification by count of plants within 50 miles, computed from plant lat/lon.
• Allocation method: within each well-mapped destination state, Montana inbound is allocated across yards proportionally to yard capacity. This is a first-order approximation; yard-level destination data is not available in any public source.
• Lower bound calculation: for partial-coverage states, the named ownership-captive yard capacity is divided by an estimated state cattle-on-feed inventory (USDA–NASS December 2025) to compute a Montana-share lower bound.

Companion analyses

• Where Montana\’s Cattle Went in 2023 — the source flow paper.
• Where Montana\’s Cattle Land — destination-state market structure.
• Captive in Practice (FAT) — the four-tier captivity framework this paper applies.
• FAT Captivity Tiers Map — every classified feedyard color-coded by tier.
• FAT Feedlot Supply Map — the complete mapped feedyard inventory underlying this analysis.

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Methodology: capacity-weighted allocation of Montana 2023 BE-10 inbound flow across captivity tiers within each destination state. Reliable for Nebraska and Kansas; lower-bound only for Texas, Colorado, Idaho, and Arizona; not computable from public data for South Dakota, Washington, Iowa, Wyoming, Minnesota, North Dakota, and Alberta. The 69% data gap is itself a finding. Underlying records: MT Department of Livestock (FOIA, 2023); FAT supply-map dataset (April 2026); USDA-NASS Cattle on Feed (Dec 2025); company yard pages for corporate-tier classification. Prepared with the assistance of AI.