Montana Cattle Markets

Market Overview

Montana cattle move through three primary marketing channels: private treaty / direct trade, video and satellite auctions, and live (in-person) auctions. By volume, private treaty is the largest channel by a wide margin — roughly 60–65% of Montana’s marketed cattle move privately, another 15–20% sell on video, and only about 16% pass through public auction barns. Auction prices nonetheless do most of the public price-discovery work because they are the only channel with daily reported numbers.

For the calculation behind these shares and the per-channel data sources, see Montana Cattle Marketing Channels. For the underlying movement data, see Where Montana’s Cattle Went in 2023.

Billings Auctions

The Billings, Montana market complex is the dominant price discovery point for Montana cattle. Two auction houses — Public Auction Yards (PAYS) and Billings Livestock Commission (BLS) — run year-round sales that together handle approximately 20,000 head in January alone and set the benchmark prices that ripple through every other marketing channel in the state.

PAYS runs cattle sales on Wednesdays (all-class) and Fridays (feeder specials, seasonal). BLS runs Mondays (all-class) and Thursdays (feeder specials, seasonal). Both yards run their marquee Feeder Specials from fall through late February, then shift to all-class and cow-calf formats for the summer months. The January Kickoff Feeder Specials at both yards are consistently the highest-volume, highest-profile sales of the year.

USDA AMS maintains dedicated market reports for each yard and sale day, plus a combined weekly summary. These reports are the primary public source for Montana auction price data:

Miles City Livestock Commission is the third Montana auction with a dedicated AMS report. Located 150 miles east of Billings in the heart of eastern Montana’s ranch country, Miles City runs Tuesday sales year-round. Volume is lighter than the Billings yards but the market serves as an important regional price point for Custer, Rosebud, Powder River, Carter, and Garfield County producers who are closer to Miles City than to Billings.

Montana Weekly Livestock Auction Summary (AMS 1778) consolidates data from all three AMS-reported auction markets — PAYS, BLS, and Miles City — into a single weekly report with combined receipts, price ranges, and market commentary. This is the best single-report overview of Montana’s public auction market each week.

For detailed multi-year auction trend analysis, see Four Year (2023–2026) Billings Cattle Auction Trends.

Video Auctions

Video auction sales have become an increasingly important marketing channel for Montana producers, particularly for larger packages of uniform calves and yearlings. An estimated 15–20% of Montana’s marketed cattle — roughly 150,000–200,000 head annually — sell through video, with the summer sales season running June through September. Three video auction companies handle the bulk of Montana consignments.

Northern Livestock Video Auction (NLVA) — Billings, MT

NLVA is Montana’s home video auction, headquartered in Billings. Their summer series is the primary video marketing window for Montana and northern Plains producers, with four named sales running June through September. The Summertime Classic in July is consistently the largest video sale in the region — 167,000 head across three days in July 2025. USDA AMS reports NLVA results under Report AMS 2772.

2026 NLVA Summer Sale Schedule

2026 dates have not been officially announced as of June 2026. The dates below are projected from three years of consistent scheduling patterns (2023–2025). Check northernlivestockvideo.com or call 1-866-616-5035 for confirmed dates and consignment deadlines.

Why NLVA matters for Montana price discovery: The Summertime Classic in particular sets the benchmark for fall-delivery calf contracts across Montana and the northern Plains. Large, uniform, reputation consignments from Montana ranches routinely top the sale. The July 2025 Classic moved 167,000 head with very active bidding and narrowing steer-heifer spreads as replacement demand pushed heifer prices higher.

Western Video Market (WVM) — Cottonwood, CA

Western Video Market is the largest video auction company in the western United States, running 13 annual live sales broadcast online and on Dish Network channel 998. Founded in 1989, WVM serves producers across the West including Montana, Wyoming, and the Dakotas. Their North Central region (MT, WY, ND, SD, NE, CO) is a regular supply area. USDA AMS reports WVM results under Report AMS 3242.

2026 WVM Summer/Fall Sale Schedule (Confirmed)

WVM also holds production sales closer to Montana territory, including at the Irma Hotel in Cody, WY and the James Kjerstad Event Center in Rapid City, SD. For the full schedule and rep contacts, see wvmcattle.com/sale_schedule.

Superior Livestock Auction — Hudson Oaks, TX (National)

Superior Livestock is the nation’s largest video auction company, running sales from their studio in Hudson Oaks, Texas roughly every two to three weeks year-round. While headquartered in Texas, Superior handles significant Montana consignments — their North Central region (MT, WY, ND, SD, NE, CO) is a major supply area. Their most recent sale (April 30, 2026) moved 23,954 head from 17 states, and the Great Plains Classic (February 18–19, 2026) moved 49,358 head. USDA AMS reports Superior results under Report AMS 2713.

Superior runs video auctions on an ongoing basis rather than a fixed seasonal schedule. Montana producers can consign to any sale. For the current schedule, see superiorlivestock.com/auctions or call 800-422-2117.

Which Channel for Which Cattle?

Video works best for large, uniform, well-described lots — load lots of 45+ head of similar weight, breed, and health program tend to bring the strongest bids because buyers can commit without physically seeing the cattle. Smaller or mixed lots generally do better at live auction where buyers can inspect and sort in person. Montana’s large ranch operations in eastern and central Montana (Custer, Rosebud, Garfield, Musselshell, Fergus counties) are particularly well-suited to video because they produce the kind of uniform load lots that video buyers target, and they’re often far from public auction infrastructure.

For more on how video compares to live auction and private treaty, see Montana Cattle Marketing Channels.

Private Treaty / Direct Sales

Private treaty is the dominant marketing channel for Montana calves and yearlings — roughly 60–65% of all marketed cattle, or about 688,000 head in 2024 on a 1.05M-head marketed total. It is also the least visible channel: there is no clearinghouse for prices, no daily report, and no requirement to disclose terms.

The category covers a range of transaction types:

• Ranch-direct to feedlot — large uniform load lots (often 500+ head) sold directly to a Corn Belt or PNW feeder, typically with multi-year buyer relationships and freight handled by the buyer.
• Order buyers — independent buyers who assemble cattle from multiple ranches into truckload lots for a feedlot client. Common in eastern Montana feeder country (Custer, Carter, Powder River, Garfield).
• Retained ownership — Montana cow-calf producers ship their own cattle to a custom feedyard and retain ownership through finishing. Inspections still occur at the state line, but no sale price is generated until the cattle are eventually sold off the rail.
• Backgrounding contracts — calves placed with an in-state or out-of-state backgrounder under a custom-feed agreement. Ownership and price negotiated outside any auction venue.
• Bull and replacement-female sales — production sales and private-treaty seedstock work, where the seller and buyer settle directly without a sale-barn check.

Why so much volume moves privately in Montana: Montana’s calf crop is heavy on large, uniform, well-bred, well-managed lots — exactly the kind of cattle that command direct-buyer interest and that don’t benefit (and may lose ground) from a sale-barn commingling event. Eastern Montana’s distance from public auction infrastructure also tilts the math: a single load of calves from Carter or Powder River County is closer to a Corn Belt feedyard than to most of Montana’s auction barns.

What we can and can’t see: Private treaty volume is invisible to USDA AMS price-reporting because no public auction or video sale event ever happens. What we can see is the downstream movement — the FOIA-released MT Department of Livestock BE-10 brand inspections capture every interstate shipment regardless of how it was marketed. That is why brand-inspection data is the only way to bound private-treaty volume from the supply side.

USDA recently created a Montana Direct Cattle Report (AMS 2770) in March 2026 to try to capture private-treaty prices through voluntary reporting by ranchers, dealers, and feedlots. In practice, participation has been minimal — most weekly reports show “no trades this week” — because reporting is voluntary and neither buyers nor sellers have an incentive to disclose terms. The report is worth monitoring as it matures, but for now it does not produce usable price data. (View AMS 2770)

Caveats on price comparison: Industry conventional wisdom holds that private-treaty cattle realize the highest prices of any channel. That is broadly true for reputation cattle in load lots, but most of the gap reflects differences in cattle type, lot size, and health programs rather than the channel itself. A small mixed-quality lot will not earn a private-treaty premium just by skipping the sale barn. See the channel-comparison discussion on the Marketing Channels page for sources and caveats.

Regional Markets

Beyond the Billings complex and Miles City, several smaller auction markets serve Montana producers as local price discovery and logistics points. These include Montana Livestock Auction in Dillon (serving southwestern Montana’s Beaverhead, Madison, and Silver Bow county ranchers), Headwaters Livestock Auction near Three Forks (Gallatin, Broadwater, Jefferson counties), Glasgow Stockyards (Valley, Phillips, and northeastern Montana), and Glendive Livestock Exchange (Dawson, Wibaux, and the eastern border counties).

These regional markets do not have dedicated USDA AMS reports, so their prices are not captured in the federal market news system. When regional sale results appear in the Montana Weekly Livestock Auction Summary (AMS 1778), they are folded into the statewide composite rather than broken out individually. Producers using regional markets can benchmark their results against the Billings and Miles City AMS reports, adjusting for freight differential and lot-size differences.

Understanding the relationship between regional markets and the Billings complex is key to marketing decisions. Billings generally sets the ceiling on Montana feeder cattle prices due to its larger buyer pool and competitive bidding. Regional markets may trade at a modest discount to Billings on comparable cattle, but they offer the advantage of proximity — lower freight, less shrink, and the ability to sell in smaller lots without the sorting and commingling that a Billings consignment requires.

Price Discovery

Montana cattle prices are influenced by national supply and demand fundamentals, regional production cycles, feeder cattle futures, and local weather and forage conditions. The Weekly Market Forecast tracks these factors on an ongoing basis.

USDA Market Reports: Complete Montana Reference

The table below lists every USDA AMS market report covering Montana cattle, organized by channel. All reports are free, published as PDFs at predictable URLs, and updated on the schedule shown. Bookmark the ones relevant to your operation.

All reports available at ams.usda.gov/mnreports/. Video auction reports cover Montana consignments within their North Central regional sections. AMS 2770 (Montana Direct) was created March 2026 and has had minimal participation to date. Updated June 2026.