Yellowstone County in context

Adjacent counties in the the Yellowstone corridor. Yellowstone County shares the Beartooth-Absaroka snowpack system with these neighbors.

Click any neighbor for its full county dashboard.

Snowpack & Moisture Detail

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

Yellowstone County’s irrigation water originates primarily in the Beartooth and Absaroka ranges to the southwest, feeding the Yellowstone River as it bends north through Billings. The county floor sits at roughly 3,000 feet elevation — too low to accumulate meaningful local snowpack — making it entirely dependent on upstream mountain accumulation in Park and Carbon counties.

Basin Index: Yellowstone River at Billings gauge tracks the primary irrigation index for the county’s roughly 150,000 irrigated acres. Drought Monitor (valid 2026-09-08): Worst class D2 (severe) over 44% of the county. Coverage at or worse than each class: D0 100%, D1 100%, D2 44%, 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) · Yellowstone County · as of 2026-09-17

Observed detail: 2 measurable-rain day(s) in the prior two weeks; largest single day 0.20 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 enters Yellowstone County from the southwest near Laurel, where the Clark’s Fork joins, then flows northeast past Billings toward the Treasure County line. These confluence points concentrate the most senior irrigation filings in south-central Montana.

The Yellowstone River carries some of Montana’s oldest decreed water rights, with many Yellowstone County diversions dating to territorial filings in the 1880s. The river is adjudicated but fully subscribed during low-flow years, meaning junior right holders — anything post-1900 in a drought year — face call risk. Clark’s Fork of the Yellowstone enters near Laurel and adds significant flow during peak snowmelt but is itself heavily appropriated upstream in Carbon County. Groundwater wells supplement stockwater across the county’s benchland areas east and south of Billings, though aquifer recharge tracks precipitation closely. Municipal growth pressure from Billings creates increasing competition between agricultural and municipal water interests on the same decrees.

Federal Grazing Leases

BLM and U.S. Forest Service permitted grazing on public-land allotments · Yellowstone 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 Yellowstone 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 1,685,284 acres · land in farms 1,433,440 acres (85% of the county).

🗺  Open the interactive land map for Yellowstone 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 Yellowstone 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 Yellowstone County.

Cattle production

Yellowstone County runs a mix of cow-calf operations on the benchlands east and south of Billings, irrigated backgrounding on Yellowstone River bottom ground, and stocker operations that use cheap grazing to put weight on calves before moving them to feedlots in Nebraska or Kansas. The Billings livestock market — home to Billings Livestock Commission — is the commercial gravity center for the region, pulling cattle from five surrounding counties. A handful of large feedlot operations in the Laurel and Huntley areas finish cattle locally, but most cow-calf producers wean and ship rather than feed through. USFS allotment access is minimal given the county’s plains character, so summer grazing depends on deeded pasture, state lease, or BLM parcels in the Pryor Mountains to the south.

Hay & winter feed

Irrigated alfalfa and alfalfa-grass mix dominate the Yellowstone and Clarks Fork river bottoms around Laurel, Huntley, and Billings. Most first-cutting runs mid-June, with two to three additional cuttings depending on water availability and September frost. A dry spring accelerates first-cut timing but crimps total tonnage; ranchers watching the Billings gauge should price replacement hay before July if the snowpack report was weak. The Billings hay market typically offers enough liquidity to source winter feed locally, though prices spike sharply in drought years as basin-wide demand concentrates at this market.

Logistics · sale barns & trucking

Billings is the logistics hub for all of south-central Montana — I-90 and I-94 intersect here, and the Billings airport handles livestock equipment and vet supply shipments that smaller counties must truck. Billings Livestock Commission on Third Avenue North runs regular weekly cattle sales with video sale capacity. Trucking from the eastern benchlands to I-90 is straightforward on US-212 and US-87; the only seasonal constraint is spring mud on county roads accessing river-bottom pastures. The rail yards in Laurel and Billings provide a feedlot-to-packer shipping option that most plains counties lack.

Licensed Processing Plants

3 federally inspected plants operating in Yellowstone 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.