Babb, MT 59411 - Glacier County

North Fork Ranch is an exceptional grass ranch located in Northwestern Montana. Presently, under a properly executed Management Intensive Grazing Program, the owners rate the carrying capacity of the Ranch at 24,000 AUM. Currently, the Ranch carries 1,850 pairs plus 75 bulls and 25 horses. Commercial cattle operations of this scale and operational efficiency are rare in todays farm and ranch market. Further, commercial cattle ranches priced at only $7,350/AU are even more elusive. North Fork Ranch represents a singular opportunity for an excellent ranch investment with consistently good return on capital. This productive operation runs very efficiently with limited equipment and includes more than 3,770 acres of dryland hay ground. The natural beauty of this part of Northwestern Montana and the Blackfeet Reservation are world renowned. North Fork Ranchs commanding views of the famed Chief Mountain, the Canadian Rockies, the eastern part of Glacier National Park and the Rocky Mountain Front is an imposing and spectacular backdrop to the highly-productive deep green pastures, aspen groves and cold-mountain waters on the Ranch.

The Ranch, with 22,480 total acres, is composed of 19,993 deeded acres and 2,487 acres of private lease and sublease. The current ranch owners and their predecessors have a long and successful history of working together with the owners of the private and tribal leases in a mutually beneficial format. The current owners have worked diligently to improve the cattle-handling facilities, pasture fencing, grass utilization, stock-water network, hay fields and capital improvements to optimize the efficiency, carrying capacity and hay production of the Ranch operation. North Fork Ranch is in exceptional operating condition and will transition seamlessly to new ownership with no large deferred maintenance issues.

North Fork Ranch has historically been utilized for a variety of equestrian and livestock operations, but has been operating as a successful commercial cow-calf operation under the current ownership for the past nine years. Presently, under a properly executed Management Intensive Grazing Program, the owners rate the carrying capacity of the Ranch at 24,000 AUM. Currently, the Ranch runs 1,850 pairs plus 75 bulls and 25 horses on the heavily sodded grass pastures during the spring, summer and early fall months, and utilize the riparian bottoms, native grass hillsides and dryland hay fields during the late-fall and winter months.

The current owners have emphasized improving the Ranchs existing 3,770 dryland hay fields, and over 1,000 acres have been recently re-farmed and planted into an alfalfa hay and grass mixture. Historically these fields have generated between 1.0-1.5 tons per acre. The owners anticipate that production will increase with 600 acres of new alfalfa seeding completed in 2017. In normal years, the dryland hay base should provide all of the annual feed necessary for the Ranch when in full production. The Ranch currently feeds about 1.75 tons of hay per cow over the winter and typically keeps about 2 tons in the stack annually.

The Ranch uses a well-designed network of pastures on a rotational basis to provide the flexibility to utilize and optimize the primary ranch resources hardy native grasses and clear, clean water. The working corrals are steel-pipe construction. These corrals have been designed and built to handle the demands of the large commercial cattle operation efficiently. There is a covered calving and livestock working facility that houses a Western Ranch hydraulic chute and well-designed and efficient sorting pens and alleys. This very efficient and well-built set of working improvements comfortably handles all of the demands of a commercial cattle operation of this scale.

Under the current ownership, calving season on the Ranch typically runs from mid-April into June. North Fork Ranch management has transformed the ranch operation to calve later in the spring to take advantage of the typically warmer weather and the availability of abundant green grass to turn out cow/calf pairs. This practice reduces weather related calf mortality and decreases the amount of hay required to feed mother cows. Weaning is typically completed in October.

The later calving season allows cows to calve on green grass and the pairs to be directly turned out onto green grass pastures surrounding the improvements and then moved to summer pasture in the higher and more removed portions of the Ranch. The pastures are all well watered with a system of live-water streams, natural prairie pot-holes and reservoirs supplemented by good stock-water tanks that fill with a combination of surface, spring and piped water. The grass and water resources on the Ranch are abundant and historically have been sufficient even in drought years.

The calves are branded in the calving pastures in the spring, and the pairs are rotated between summer pastures on the deeded and leased ground several times over the course of the summer maximizing the grass resource by giving grazed pastures time to rest and grow between rotations. At weaning, steers typically weigh approximately 510 pounds and heifers run approximately 490 pounds. After weaning, the cows spend the remainder of the fall and into winter on the dryland hay ground, creek bottoms and native range until the feeding and calving cycle returns.

With a consistent soil profile and typical rainfall that exceeds 2025 inches annually, the dryland hay fields have historically yielded around 11.5 tons of alfalfa and grass hay per acre with one cutting and fall and winter grazing for bred cows. Many of the hay fields have undergone annual improvements and recent re-seeding that will increase hay production when fully mature and fertilized. The current owners have emphasized building soil health in the fields and have invested heavily in soil-building fertilizers that should continue to improve production into the future. The Seller is confident that continuing with this fertilizer program in these fields could yield an additional half to one ton of forage per acre. The current owners have re-seeded over 1,000 acres of the hay fields to alfalfa in the past few years.