Page 22 - NMHBA Spring 2022

Susan Hunter’s HunterCreek Farms
From Music To Mares; Steel Guitars To Studs
by Pete Herrera
Dwain & Trisha Yarbar, owners of Artful Run.
Career changes can be an equal mix of intrigue and intimidation.
For Susan Hunter, the onetime country
western singer with an easy-going style and ready to roll laugh, it was a middle-age leap of faith that some would say defied the tenets of common sense and conventional wisdom.
You’ve got to believe there are some long odds to overcome when you go from keyboards to broodmares and steel guitars to studs. But improbable as it might have seemed at first, Hunter managed to turn a chunk of land on the east side of Roswell into one of the state’s top-rated horse farms.
HunterCreek Farms is today a vibrant and highly successful full-service farm serving the New Mexico horse racing industry. The 90-acre farm offers breeding, foaling, year-round care for mares, training, sales prepping, and surgery rehabilitation.
HunterCreek is also home to three Thoroughbred studs with impressive bloodlines and plenty of upside potential that through their offspring should make a significant impact on the state’s breeding program.
Susan owns two of those studs--Kentucky Wildcat and Right Rigger. The third, Artful Run, is owned by her Texas-based clients, Trisha and Dwain Yarbar.
“We wouldn’t have our babies anywhere else,”
said Trisha Yarbar. “Susan treats our horses like they are hers, too. She’s like a surrogate mom. She is constantly in touch with me on how they are doing, or not doing. And when they go to the track, she comes and cheers them on.”
This year, the ranch is expanding into
the Quarter Horse breeding industry with the acquisition of the 5-year-old RRelentless. During his racing career, RRelentless earned around $108,000. The young sire is owned by a partnership.
There are no active racehorses on the ranch, but the babies born here and who eventually may make it to the track are broken and get their initial training at HunterCreek. Appropriately, the farm has acquired the nickname “The Nursery.”
“I’m the factory,” says Susan. “We deliver babies for other people. That’s one of our main businesses here. Most of the mares that are bred here also live here. We have 176 (total horses). Mares, studs, babies, geldings.
So, what did it take to make HunterCreek Farms what it is today? For one, a good deal
of perseverance on Susan’s part. Secondly, her ability to learn from the ground up the many and complicated facets of foaling and breeding- -something she knew absolutely nothing about when she got started.
“We wouldn’t have our babies anywhere else. Susan treats our horses like they are hers too.
She’s like a surrogate mom.” - Trisha Yarbar
20 New Mexico Horse Breeder