hardingoperation

Nature of the Operation

Harding Land & Cattle Company’s main office is headquartered in Terry, Montana. Terry is a small eastern Montana town with a population of around 600 people. It is nestled along the Yellowstone River and is surrounded on its northern edge by what are known as the Terry Badlands, an area of rough river breaks that contain high vistas, deep gullies, and plenty of “gumbo”. The Yellowstone River Valley near Terry is very productive with much Sugar Beets, Corn, Alfalfa, Pinto Beans, and other grains being grown with irrigation water from the Yellowstone.

The terrain on the ranch can vary. Much of the ranch consists of rough, timbered hills and open gumbo badlands. The breaks that directly border the Powder River are very sandy and gravely. The Locate Creek breaks, as well as Snow Creek to the north and Meyer’s Creek to the south are rougher and contain more clay/gumbo soils with sinkholes and deep ravines and gullies. The land flattens out toward the northern edge of the ranch and the Coal Creek drainage is known for its good grass production and gently rolling hills. A 13,000 acre forest fire burned on the ranch in 1998. This changed and continues to change the face of the landscape.

HLCC has a cowherd of 750+ commercial cows and 250 RanchStar cows, totaling at least 1,000 cows. The number of bulls HLCC uses for its own breeding purposes varies from year to year, but stays within the range of 50 to 60 RanchStar bulls. Except for the replacement heifers and about 300 cows that are fed during the winter at the feedlot (until calving season arrives), all cattle are kept at the ranch year around. After the winter feeding and calving duties are complete, the pairs are taken to various pastures around the ranch for the duration of the summer and into the fall as long as weather and range conditions permit.

The ranch is also used to accommodate the eight different single-sire breeding groups for the RanchStar herd each breeding season. The breeding groups contain from 25 to 30 cows and are each placed in a separate pasture with one bull.

About 300 acres of hay bottoms are located along Locate Creek. These hay meadows are not irrigated, but consistently produce from 1 to 1.5 tons per acre of grass hay each summer.

There are a number of routes that can be taken to travel between the farm/feedlot unit and the ranch unit. It is an 80-mile trip from one location to another if one travels around Miles City by way of pavement. If a shorter route is desired, there are a number of dirt cut-across roads that stretch north to Terry and shorten the trip to around 35 to 40 miles.

HLCC is composed of both an irrigated farm/feedlot unit and a ranch unit, which are at separate locations. The HLCC farm/feedlot unit is located on the old highway, 11 miles west of Terry. The feedlot has a capacity of 2,000 head. Each fall, about 1,000 HLCC calves are hauled from the ranch to the feedlot to be backgrounded. Other feeder calves that are purchased as well as some of HLCC’s cows from the ranch are brought over to the feedlot to be backgrounded or fed through the winter respectively.

The HLCC farm, which is near the feedlot, consists of over 800 irrigated acres. Roughly 200 acres are in corn production, which is chopped for silage, and the remaining acres are used for hay production.

Most of the hay production on the farm is alfalfa, but some fields are an alfalfa/grass mix or pure grass. There are many issues concerning the farm each year. Soil type can vary drastically from one location to another. For instance, the fields closer to the river are more sandy and require completely different management practices than the fields closer to the feedlot, which happen to have more clay in their composition.

The Harding Land & Cattle Company Ranch unit is located roughly 30 miles south of Terry and 37 miles east of Miles City, Montana on Highway 12. The ranch borders the Powder River on its western edge. The HLCC ranch is made up of 54,000 acres or almost 85 sections. The ranch is split almost equally in half by Highway 12, which runs east/west between Miles City and Baker, MT. One of the main drainages at the ranch, Locate Creek, runs just north of Highway 12 and directly parallels the highway for most of its journey through the ranch. The main ranch headquarters and the other set of houses and corrals, called the Talquezal unit, are both located near Locate Creek.