Glasgow Stockyards

The Thursday sale at Glasgow Stockyards begins on weigh-ups. On June 25, 2026, the yards started on them at 9:00 with about 800 head expected. The list included 30 cow-calf pairs whose calves had not yet been branded or worked, 5 to 10 bred cows, 45 bulls, 50 young calves and 50 mixed feeders. The pairs and bred cows were to sell at 1:00. The yards stand just east of Glasgow on the Fort Peck Highway and hold an all-class cattle auction every Thursday. Their website promises, “The coffee pot is always on.”

Thursdays on the Fort Peck Highway

Start times follow the size of the run. A light run on July 23, 2026, started at 10:30. It held 100 to 150 head of weigh-ups and ten older pairs with May and June calves at their side, nine black and one red. The yards post the coming consignments before each sale. Afterward they publish a market report that lists each consignor by town, weight and price. The report for June 18, 2026, counted 506 cattle. Its lines read “SACO 2270 BULL 225.00,” “HINSDALE 1350 COW 203.00,” “ZORTMAN 965 YOUNG COWS 308.00.” Other entries that spring came from Chinook, Loring, Malta, Wolf Point, Opheim, Jordan, Dodson, Scobey, Plentywood, Nashua and Whitewater.

The Montana Department of Livestock keeps a brand office at the yards. It is one of 12 brand offices and livestock markets the department lists for the state, and Jordanne Pruitt is the market supervisor. The department advises anyone planning to attend a sale to call the market first and confirm that a sale is being held and what will sell that day.

Other business also runs through the yards. A feed counter stocks Crystalyx and Purina products. The yards hold estate auctions and offer farm and ranch auction services. The GSI Consignment Auction ran Saturday, May 30, 2026, at 10 a.m. with food, and the day before, the yards invited people to stop by and look over the goods. Every Thursday sale is broadcast live with online bidding on DVAuction, a service that is free to watch and lists the Glasgow sales at 10:00 a.m. Central. The Northern Livestock Video Auction gives sellers another way to market cattle.

Cody Cornwell owns the stockyards. His stepson, Jake Newton, is co-owner. Iva Murch is the seller contact on the auction listings. Ed Hinton, Justin Fuhrmann and Dylan Welsh work as area fieldmen and auctioneers. The yards say they employ more than 25 people and welcome visitors who want to learn how a livestock auction works.

Bulls in the spring ring

Each spring the yards host breeding bull production auctions. On April 16, 2026, the Big Dry Angus Ranch of the Brent and Jack McRae family of Jordan sold 84 yearling bulls at an average of $9,839. The top bull, lot 27, brought $16,000 and went to Duckworth Ranch of Courval, Saskatchewan. On April 30, Nelson Ranch of Glasgow sold 55 Angus-Simmental composite bulls at an average of $6,709. Its lot 1 went to Wasson Ranch of Whitewater for $10,000. The yards billed May 7 as “the last bull sale of the year.” That day Francis and Arley Koenig of Winnett held their 17th annual Red Angus production auction and sold 41 two-year-old bulls at an average of $7,122, with a top of $15,000. The Emond pairs sold after the bulls. The yards’ post on them read, “everyone of them is a BULL Calf!!!!!”

The McRaes have worked with the yards since 1988. At their 37th annual sale, in April 2025, Cornwell spoke to Northern Ag Network about the market. “Every day we’ve been making new contract highs — highest ever traded prices on the board, highest priced cull bulls, cows, and steer calves ever recorded in history,” he said. On drought he said, “we have to believe, have faith. It’s going to rain.” Brent McRae now runs the ranch with his wife, Hillari, and his sons Charlie, John and Ben were at the sale. He traced the herd to his father: “We started raising Black Angus cattle in 1963. Dad, Charlie McRae, bought some bred heifers from Harry Ross, right across the fence from his uncle.” He said that on drought and grasshoppers, “It seems like we’ve been in the bullseye for that the last number of years.” Cornwell added, “The beef cattle business in general isn’t all about high prices, it’s about relationships. It’s about neighbors.”

Eighty years and barbecue burgers

On Thursday, September 17, 2026, the yards held their 80th Anniversary Customer Appreciation Day together with the 33rd Big Fall Yearling Classic and an all-class cattle auction. Jace Thompson, the 2026 World Champion Auctioneer, made a special appearance. The sale started at 9 a.m. Mountain with more than 2,400 head expected. The early list included 304 steers weighing 900 to 965 pounds, 255 black and red spayed heifers, and another 300 to 400 open heifers that were “still being tested Tuesday and Wednesday.”

Lunch ran from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. to honor the farmers and ranchers of northeast Montana. It served barbecue burgers from three local producers: Montana Branded Inc. of Josh and Maggie Johnson, Westby; Math Farms Beef of Cody and Michelle Math, Dodson; and Bred Red Meats LLC of Lee and Michelle Gibbs, Circle.

Six cows, a record heifer, and the people on sale day

The stockyards give 1946 as the year they began serving the region’s livestock producers. A 2020 obituary for the rancher Floyd “Sonny” Nelson Jr. of the Tampico and Glasgow area counts differently. In 1973 Nelson consigned a three-quarter Simmental heifer to the Big Sky New Breeds Association Sale, and it sold for $12,500. The obituary calls that “the highest price ever paid for one animal in the 22 year history of the Glasgow Livestock Yard,” a count that does not match the 1946 date. Nelson had begun artificial insemination in 1962 and started selling yearling bulls to Hi-Line ranchers in 1971. He died at home on April 25, 2020. The obituary said that at the Spring Production Sale at the stockyards that April 30 there would be “a lot of heavy hearts.”

Also in 1962, Dorothy and Dutch Eayrs started their registered Angus herd by buying six registered cows at the stockyards. The cows had been raised in North Dakota and carried Bandolier bloodlines. The Eayrs family sold bulls private treaty for many years. In 2003 they held their first auction at the yards, and the ranch says it continued there for 20 years.

On July 23, 1999, the stockyards reported a burglary. Valley County Sheriff Dick Wessler said items had been taken and his department was investigating. In 2007, Gov. Brian Schweitzer appointed Linda Nielsen of Nashua to the Alternative Livestock Advisory Council. The announcement said she owned and operated Glasgow Stockyards, Inc. and was active in the Montana Association of Livestock Auction Markets.

On April 6, 2023, workers were branding heifers at the yards when the propane tank they were using caught fire. Gas filled the building, and it exploded. One man was flown by Mercy Flight helicopter to Benefis Health System in Great Falls for smoke inhalation and was placed in intensive care.

Local obituaries record the yards’ long-serving hands. Rick Stahl, an auctioneer for Glasgow Stockyards Inc., was a semifinalist at the World Livestock Auctioneer Championships. Kermit O. Flom worked sale days for 17 years after he retired in 1997. Donald Ray Watson came to the yards after riding jobs and cow camps. E. Lyle Haynes worked there while running his ranch at Saco, and Kenneth T. Borseth while also working for the Valley County Road Department. Adam Tollefson worked there in his teens and early twenties. Olive Helen Mullen worked at the stockyards for 39 years while raising her family, and her daughter, Linda Lou Olson, worked there alongside her.