Montana Brand Data Reveals Cattle Movement
A three-year, county-by-county view of brand-inspected cattle movement, built from public-records releases by the Montana Department of Livestock — with the assistance of AI. Covers calendar years 2022, 2023 and 2024.
Statewide overview, three years side by side
Every BE-10 inspection — the change-of-ownership and interstate-movement record that all Montana cattle pass through — for calendar years 2022, 2023 and 2024, normalized and combined from each year’s two source systems (Fort Supply legacy + ServiceNow current).
| 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Inspection lots | 44,505 | 39,003 | 37,374 |
| Head inspected | 1,672,176 | 1,664,873 | 1,709,673 |
| Avg head per lot | 37.6 | 42.7 | 45.7 |
| Stayed in Montana | 637,751 (38.1%) | 652,424 (39.2%) | 650,849 (38.1%) |
| Shipped out of state | 1,034,425 (61.9%) | ~1.01M (60.8%) | 1,058,824 (61.9%) |
Three years that agree with each other. Total head lands between 1.66M and 1.71M in every year, and the share that stayed in Montana sits between 38% and 39% every year — that consistency is what makes the series trustworthy. 2024 is the highest of the three on head inspected (up 2.7% on 2023) with the fewest lots, so average lot size kept climbing: 37.6 in 2022, 42.7 in 2023, 45.7 in 2024. Fewer, larger lots is consistent with more cattle clearing through auction-yard and video-sale channels rather than small private-treaty moves.
Top destinations by year
Ranked by head count. Montana itself is included as a “destination” — cattle inspected and re-sold within the state without crossing a line.
2022
| Rank | State | Head | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Montana | 637,751 | 38.1% |
| 2 | Nebraska | 203,296 | 12.2% |
| 3 | South Dakota | 189,521 | 11.3% |
| 4 | Iowa | 88,887 | 5.3% |
| 5 | Wyoming | 75,527 | 4.5% |
| 6 | Canada (province not specified on the record) | 71,862 | 4.3% |
| 7 | Washington | 71,773 | 4.3% |
| 8 | Idaho | 64,700 | 3.9% |
| 9 | Minnesota | 62,328 | 3.7% |
| 10 | Colorado | 62,024 | 3.7% |
| 11 | North Dakota | 47,039 | 2.8% |
| 12 | Kansas | 36,612 | 2.2% |
2023
| Rank | State | Head | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Montana | 652,424 | 39.2% |
| 2 | Nebraska | 212,356 | 12.8% |
| 3 | South Dakota | 183,941 | 11.1% |
| 4 | Washington | 84,655 | 5.1% |
| 5 | Iowa | 76,230 | 4.6% |
| 6 | Wyoming | 73,105 | 4.4% |
| 7 | Idaho | 66,549 | 4.0% |
| 8 | Minnesota | 65,668 | 3.9% |
| 9 | Colorado | 65,503 | 3.9% |
| 10 | North Dakota | 55,298 | 3.3% |
| 11 | Alberta, Canada | 41,315 | 2.5% |
Nebraska and South Dakota hold the #2 and #3 spots in all three years, and the top ten is nearly identical — the Corn Belt feeding relationship is structural, not a one-year blip.
2024
| Rank | State | Head | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Montana | 650,849 | 38.1% |
| 2 | Nebraska | 245,748 | 14.4% |
| 3 | South Dakota | 181,572 | 10.6% |
| 4 | Wyoming | 93,025 | 5.4% |
| 5 | Iowa | 85,018 | 5.0% |
| 6 | Idaho | 72,184 | 4.2% |
| 7 | Alberta, Canada | 67,995 | 4.0% |
| 8 | Washington | 67,489 | 3.9% |
| 9 | North Dakota | 61,930 | 3.6% |
| 10 | Minnesota | 58,040 | 3.4% |
| 11 | Kansas | 42,789 | 2.5% |
| 12 | Colorado | 40,299 | 2.4% |
2024 reads like the other two years. Nebraska took its largest share of the three years (14.4%, up from 12.8%), Wyoming climbed to #4, and Alberta rebounded to 68,000 head after a soft 2023 — nearly all of it out of Judith Basin County. Washington slipped from #4 in 2023 to #8, and Colorado fell to #12 on the lowest count of the three years.
Corridor totals
Three destination groupings that recur in the county-level detail below.
| Corridor | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Corn Belt feeding NE + SD + IA + MN + KS | 580,644 (34.7%) | ~571,000 (34%) | 613,167 (35.9%) |
| Pacific Northwest WA + ID + OR | 139,061 (8.3%) | ~152,000 (9.1%) | 142,478 (8.3%) |
| Canada all provinces + unspecified | 85,756 (5.1%) | ~42,000+ (2.5%+) | 68,523 (4.0%) |
The Corn Belt corridor grew to its largest share of the three years in 2024, carried by Nebraska. The Pacific Northwest gave back its 2023 gain, and Canada recovered most of the ground it lost in 2023.
Seasonal pulse — when Montana ships
If you want to know when Montana ranchers ship, the answer is October, in every year we have on file.
2022 · monthly head
October moved 28.6% of the year’s total; September–November together moved 52.8%.
2023 · monthly head
October moved 28.4% of the year’s total; September–November together moved 54.0%. The May/June grass-turnout bump and the fall shipping wall repeat almost exactly from 2022.
2024 · monthly head
October moved 28.9% of the year’s total — 493,765 head, the biggest single month in the three-year series; September–November together moved 53.2%. Three years running, the shape is the same: a May grass-turnout bump, a July trough, and a fall shipping wall that peaks in October.
County weight
Ten counties account for the lion’s share of statewide volume, and the ranking barely moves year to year.
| County | 2022 head | 2023 head | 2024 head |
|---|---|---|---|
| Yellowstone | 117,032 | 123,344 | 119,772 |
| Beaverhead | 102,677 | 107,787 | 101,493 |
| Judith Basin | 99,899 | 76,722 | 92,056 |
| Custer | 67,005 | 78,913 | 71,337 |
| Carter | 56,170 | 71,140 | 77,006 |
| Carbon | 67,770 | 69,855 | 72,486 |
| Powder River | 52,501 | 64,812 | 62,956 |
| Big Horn | 71,508 | 62,580 | 73,742 |
| Teton | 61,358 | 56,921 | 56,687 |
| Fergus | 59,829 | 53,918 | 61,821 |
The same ten counties lead in all three years. Carter and Powder River remain the most consistently export-heavy spot in the state — Carter shipped 86.6% out of state in 2022, 88.9% in 2023 and 86.4% in 2024, every year mostly to South Dakota; Powder River shipped 87.3%, 87.0% and 84.4%. Beaverhead’s largest out-of-state buyer is Idaho in all three years. Yellowstone’s is more volatile — Nebraska took the most head out of Yellowstone County in 2022, Washington in 2023 and Idaho in 2024, which is more likely a shift in which order-buyer had the biggest week at the Billings yards than a change in where Yellowstone-area cattle actually go. Judith Basin’s 2024 rebound (92,056 head, up from 76,722) is almost entirely the Alberta corridor coming back: 53,107 head left Judith Basin for Alberta in 2024.
Reading the county numbers: auction yards matter
One nuance worth flagging before anyone over-reads the county rankings, in any of the three years: the FOIA workbooks record the inspection county, not the county the cattle were actually raised in. Brand inspectors mostly work at points of sale and shipping — auction yards, video-auction collection points, and large feedlots — so a county that hosts a major auction yard will appear large in the rankings even if comparatively few of its inspected cattle were born or grazed inside its boundaries.
Yellowstone County is the clearest example. The county is Montana’s #1 or #2 county of inspection every year on file — but Yellowstone is Billings. Most of those cattle moved through the two big auction yards there: Billings Livestock Commission (BLS) and Public Auction Yards (PAYS). Yellowstone County’s economy is overwhelmingly service industry, livestock equipment and ranching supply — not primary cow-calf production. When you see Yellowstone at the top, read it as where Montana cattle were sold and shipped, not where they were raised.
Other counties whose totals carry an auction-yard premium include Cascade (Great Falls), Custer (Miles City Livestock), Gallatin (Headwaters Livestock at Three Forks), Missoula (Western Montana Stockyards), Dawson (Glendive) and Valley (Glasgow). Counties without a major yard — Carter, Powder River, Garfield, Petroleum — are far closer to a true read of where cattle were born and grazed. The Department’s data does not include the originating ranch on each inspection, so we can’t fully resolve the auction-yard distortion from this dataset alone; it’s a real and known feature of brand-inspection data and should be kept in mind whenever inspection counties get treated as production counties.
What this is and isn’t
A few honest caveats before anyone reads too much into three years of snapshots.
- BE-10 inspections measure transactions and movements, not standing inventory. A single steer can appear twice if it’s sold and then re-shipped across state lines.
- “Destination state” is the buyer’s address of record, not necessarily the final feedlot.
- The Department confirmed in writing that these files support an annual summary by county of origin and by destination state, and that inspection date can be used for seasonal patterns — but that buyer-type classification (cow-calf, stocker, feedlot, packer, etc.) is not information the Department collects. We can’t build that layer from this dataset; it would need to come from another source.
- 2024 figures are from the file the Department supplied in September 2026. A small number of 2024 ServiceNow rows (fewer than half a percent) carry no head count or no destination state; they are included in the lot count and carried at zero head.
- Three years is still a short run. With 2022, 2023 and 2024 in hand, the multi-year picture is stable enough to talk about — but it’s still three points, not a trend line.
Where to read more
Every Montana county page on honestcattle.net carries a 2023 movement appendix below the main body — top destinations, monthly head, and the percentage that shipped out of state, built from this same dataset. The 2022 and 2024 county-level detail will roll out to individual county pages next.
- Carter County — the most export-heavy county in the state, three years running.
- Beaverhead County — Idaho-facing flow.
- Judith Basin County — the Alberta/Canada corridor.
- Yellowstone County — biggest single-county volume in the state, and the clearest auction-yard effect.
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Methodology: figures are derived from Montana Department of Livestock BE-10 brand-inspection records for calendar years 2022, 2023 and 2024, released to Honest Cattle under public-records requests. Each year’s source workbook contains two systems — Fort Supply (legacy) and ServiceNow (current) — normalized and combined for analysis; cattle (BE-10) inspections only, horse and bison records excluded. The 2024 figures use the file the Department supplied in September 2026. Data prepared with the assistance of AI; the underlying records are the Department’s.
Montana Brand Data Reveals Cattle Movement · updated September 2, 2026 · Honest Cattle