Rosebud County in context

Adjacent counties in the the Yellowstone-Tongue corridor. Rosebud County shares the Wolf Mountains and Tongue River headwaters with these neighbors.

Click any neighbor for its full county dashboard.

Snowpack & Moisture Detail

SNOTEL station-by-station read for Rosebud County. The dashboard above gives current aggregate; this section shows where the water actually is.

Rosebud County’s primary surface water comes from the Yellowstone River along its southern edge and the Tongue River draining from the Wyoming border through Ashland. Snowpack from the Bighorn and Wolf Mountain foothills to the southwest feeds ephemeral creeks and stock reservoirs across the county’s rolling mixed-grass rangeland.

Basin Index: Yellowstone River mainstem running adequate for irrigation diversions; Tongue River basin conditions variable depending on Wyoming headwater snowpack. Drought Monitor (valid 2026-09-15): Worst class D2 (severe) over 25% of the county. Coverage at or worse than each class: D0 100%, D1 97%, D2 25%, D3 0%, D4 0%. Station snapshot as of September 17, 2026 — live dashboard above is current.

Two-Week Rainfall

Observed (prior 14 days) and forecast (next 14 days) · Rosebud County · as of 2026-09-17

Observed detail: 3 measurable-rain day(s) in the prior two weeks; largest single day 0.03 in.

Forecast source: NWS/NOAA api.weather.gov (days 1–7) blended with Open-Meteo gridded model (days 8–14). The next-14-day total is model-derived — NOAA quantitative precipitation forecast is precise only through ~7 days, and days 8–14 are a model blend, not an observed gauge reading.

Water Rights, Irrigation & Land Ownership

The Yellowstone River forms the southern boundary corridor with Forsyth sitting at its most critical diversion point for Rosebud County irrigators. The Tongue River enters from Wyoming near Ashland and flows northwest to join the Yellowstone at Miles City in adjacent Custer County.

The Yellowstone carries some of Montana’s most senior pre-1900 irrigation rights, and Rosebud County holders are generally well-positioned in years with normal Wyoming headwater runoff. Tongue River rights are more contested, with a 1996 compact governing Montana-Wyoming allocations and periodic call years reducing deliveries to junior Montana holders. Upland stock water rights on ephemeral drainages like Rosebud Creek and Sunday Creek are largely pre-1920 vintage but small in volume. Coal-bed methane development in the Powder River Basin side of the county created produced-water disposal issues that affect some stock reservoirs and creek reaches. The Northern Cheyenne Reservation occupies the eastern strip of the county, and tribal water rights on the Tongue remain a long-term adjudication factor. Secondary sources include the Rosebud Creek system draining northeast from the Wolf Mountains.

Federal Grazing Leases

BLM and U.S. Forest Service permitted grazing on public-land allotments · Rosebud County

AUMs (BLM) and head-months (USFS) are both animal-unit-months — one animal grazing for one month, the standard measure of authorized use. Acres are BLM public acres and USFS GIS acres on the mapped allotments.

Statewide maps: BLM allotment map · Forest Service allotment map. Excludes Montana DNRC state-trust grazing leases.

Land Resources

Three independent estimates of how Rosebud County’s land is used — shown side by side, never blended

Every acreage figure below comes from an independent source that measures the land a different way. We show them side by side — and never blend reported acreage, satellite pixels and tax classifications into one unexplained number. Total county area 3,205,206 acres · land in farms 2,873,641 acres (90% of the county).

🗺  Open the interactive land map for Rosebud County →
See crops, range, irrigated fields, public land and ownership parcels drawn live on the map.

Principal crops — official vs. satellite

These columns measure different things, so they should not match. The Census counts acres actually harvested in the census year, as reported by producers; the Cropland Data Layer counts every acre the satellite saw in that crop, including fields in a crop–fallow rotation and stands not harvested. Winter wheat is the clearest example: much of the county’s wheat ground sits in fallow in any given year, so the satellite total runs well above harvested acres. CDL also over-attributes hay and forage on native range. “Withheld” means the Census suppressed the value to protect an individual operation’s privacy.

How the county’s acres classify

Three ways of counting the same ground. Census figures are producer-reported acres in farms; the satellite column is a wall-to-wall pixel classification of the whole county (so it also sees developed land, water and non-farm ground the others do not); the assessment column is the Montana Department of Revenue’s parcel-level tax classification (CAMA), which is why its cropland total tracks the Census closely while the satellite tends to run higher. Developed and open-water rows come only from the satellite. Where they disagree, no single number is “wrong” — they are measuring different things.

Irrigated land, three independent ways

The single most important acreage figure for a cattle operation, and the three sources genuinely differ. The Census counts acres actually irrigated and harvested in the census year; the Montana DOR figure is what is classified and taxed as irrigated; the DNRC mapping captures the full remote-sensed irrigated extent, including ground that carries irrigation but was idle or in another use that year — so it usually reads highest. We publish all three rather than pick one.

What each estimate means

• USDA Census of Agriculture — producer-reported, the official record. Highly credible, but taken every five years and suppressed in counties where a value would identify a single operation.
• Satellite (Cropland Data Layer) — USDA’s annual, wall-to-wall satellite classification. Complete county coverage every year, but it infers crops from imagery, so it mislabels some ground and over-calls hay and forage on native range.
• Tax / assessment — Montana Department of Revenue parcel-level classification from the CAMA assessment roll (2026 tax year), aggregated from the Montana State Library cadastral. Parcel- and ownership-based; a land classification, not an annual crop report.

Sources: USDA NASS Census of Agriculture 2022 (Quick Stats); USDA Cropland Data Layer 2023 (CropScape zonal statistics, USDA-NASS); Montana Department of Revenue CAMA assessment acreage via the MSDI cadastral parcels layer (tax year 2026); Montana DNRC Statewide Irrigation dataset. Prepared by Dirk Adams with the assistance of AI.

Local Help

Verified contacts and official destinations for Rosebud County — not a directory dump, just where to actually call

Extension, USDA, market, brand and diagnostic links go to the official Montana source; the DNRC office and phone are the specific regional office serving this county. Provider directories (veterinarians, feed dealers) will be added only once a repeatable verification standard is in place. Prepared by Dirk Adams with the assistance of AI.

Production & Sales

Operation character, hay base, and how cattle reach market from Rosebud County.

Cattle production

Rosebud County runs a strong cow-calf base concentrated along the Yellowstone bottom and Tongue River valley, with larger dryland operations pushing north onto the Pumpkin Creek and Mizpah Creek drainages. Yearling stocker programs are common among operators who summer on BLM allotments and sell at Miles City in October. The county has a notable feedlot presence near Forsyth tied to Yellowstone River irrigation corn and hay. Northern Cheyenne tribal ranchers in the Ashland corridor operate under a distinct land tenure structure but contribute meaningfully to the county’s total inventory.

Hay & winter feed

Flood-irrigated alfalfa and grass hay along the Yellowstone River near Forsyth is the county’s primary winter feed base. Tongue River bottom ground around Ashland produces native hay and some alfalfa under gravity-flow systems. First cutting typically runs late June; second cutting is weather-dependent and often skipped in dry years. Current-year hay outlook tracks closely with Yellowstone diversion availability through July.

Logistics · sale barns & trucking

Miles City Livestock Commission in adjacent Custer County is the primary market for Rosebud operators, roughly 45 miles east of Forsyth on I-94. Forsyth itself sits on I-94 with a grain elevator and local trucking infrastructure. Billings feedlots and packers are a 3-hour haul west. Northern operations near Colstrip or on the Garfield County line face longer hauls on US-12 or gravel county roads. Spring mud on bentonite-heavy roads north of the river can delay trucking into May.

Licensed Processing Plants

1 federally inspected plant operating in Rosebud County — establishment IDs and contacts, verified against the federal and state directories

Meat from federally inspected and state-inspected plants can be sold; custom-exempt plants are not listed here. Verified August 2026 against the USDA FSIS Meat, Poultry & Egg Product Inspection Directory and the Montana Department of Livestock state plant list (Jan 2026). Grants of inspection change — call before you haul.