As you enter the ranch and view the ranch headquarters and beautiful river bottoms, you instantly recognize the pride of ownership Ellis and Betty Doney have for the Green Hills Ranch. The location of the ranch along with the immaculate improvements, would make this an outstanding purebred operation.
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Property Details
3,350 Deeded Acres 640 State Leased Acres 3,990 Total Acres
As you drive into the headquarters of the Green Hills Ranch you have to be impressed with the ranch home and support buildings as they are very well kept, neat and clean. The 4000 square foot home and double attached garage is the focal point, surrounded by large lawns and protected from the west winds by a well designed shelterbelt. The house has four bedrooms, three bathrooms, office, mud room, large living and dining room along with a well designed beautiful modern kitchen that looks out over a large garden spot with vistas of the river bottom meadows and large cottonwood trees.
The shop/calving barn combination, is a very unique building that contains a bunkhouse for ease of checking heifers during calving season and has an attached meat cutting room with walk in cooler and meat smoker. Attached to the calving barn is a well designed set of corrals, working alley and chute.
An additional small shop and storage shed round out the ranch improvements.
The Green Hills Ranch is presently being run as a commercial cow calf operation. Ellis and Betty Doney have built a reputation Angus herd and normally run 175 cow calf pairs. The cowherd starts out the year near the headquarters where they are easy to feed and care for, as calving time approaches they can be brought into the extensive corral setup and through the calving barn if the weather requires it. After branding and summer approaches, cattle are trailed out to the native range pastures where they spend the summer. Calves are weaned and shipped in early fall and the cowherd is moved to river bottom pasture and hay meadows.
Water Resources
The ranch has an abundance of water rights from both Deadman’s Basin and the Musselshell River for irrigation purposes. With July 17, 1884 Musselshell Rights, the Green Hills Ranch owns some of the oldest dated water rights on the river. Springs, wells, small reservoirs, Musselshell River frontage and pipelines to several pastures for stock water, provide an excellent water source throughout the entire ranch.
The absence of heavy hunting pressure along with extensive wildlife habitat, both on the ranch and on the additional five miles of Musselshell River bottom are a recipe for very healthy populations of whitetail deer, antelope and mule deer. There are also populations of upland birds including sharptail grouse, Hungarian partridge and pheasant. Excellent habitat for waterfowl on the river bottom and many of the Canadian geese that mate and nest in this area can be seen roosting on the sandstone cliffs just north of the ranch throughout the spring. With the addition of several food plots the river bottom would produce and hold even more game. The Musselshell River; while not a blue ribbon stream is certainly fishable for trout and other species of fish.
$5,263
Location Details
The Green Hills Ranch is located west of the small town of Lavina, MT. Lavina is a town with limited services but does provide a gas station, post office, cafe and bar.
Billings, the largest city in Montana is located approximately 50 miles southeast of the Green Hills Ranch and is the major trade center for area ranchers. Billings has two excellent hospitals, two universities, a commercial airport serviced by several airlines and all the services of a major city to include Montana’s best restaurants and shopping.
