River Hills Ranch Ltd.

River Hills Ranch Ltd., Wolfe Creek Quarter Horses and Nip Creek Ranch proudly raise quality Quarter Horses for roping, barrels, ranching and performance. Our business is tailored to buyers wanting to raise the bar and take themselves to the next level.

Our vision has been to provide our high quality, home raised horses from our program worldwide. We are achieving this through our honest sales, dependable reputation, generations of hands-on experience and work ethic. We are three ranches of the same family, working together as a team to only create and provide the top end horses for your needs, raising them from the ground up. Whether it be NFR, rodeos in other countries, World Series, or your local events we provide you with our personal attention, to make sure your bar is raised.

Our breeding program, running for 40 years plus, has always revolved around our ranching lifestyle including pasture work and feedlot work for our cow/calf and yearling operation. We ran 27-30 broodmares and 3 stallions between our ourselves, operating under separate ranch names, but running our stock together as one on the same breeding and training program. You will note the broodmare number today is reduced to almost half, as we have been slowly privately dispersing for the past several years.

We breed what we like to ride, always looking for new ways to raise the bar for the horses in our industry. We breed good moving horses, we want them smooth to ride! A good solid foot and bone under them to keep sound and less prone to injury. Good muscling and balance, along with a cool mindset has made our program shine. This is also what has allowed our horses to be exceptional rodeo horses, and very versatile in other directions including working cow horse, western pleasure, halter, English, jumping and dressage.

Raising and promoting top head and heel horses for our growing rope horse industry, has also led us to branching out and promote in barrel racing. The training programs our horses go through start from the ground up, giving a good foundation with solid basis on our horses. They are kept sound and sane by not pushing them beyond what their mind and body can handle. 

Our main training program is with Freddie McKerchar and has been for many years. He puts a start on our colts that is second to none. We usually like to see the colts get a 60 day start with him, but lots of times they are bought with just 30 days. His colt training program is one of the most impressive ones we’ve come across, giving such a solid foundation and confidence in what we we were sending to their new home. Freddie also has finished several futurity horses for us, always scoring high and showing well with no skipped steps. He has been an absolute asset to our program and team.

Bobby Lewis Quarter Horses, trained and showed our stallion Smokin N Rockin for the first years of our ownership of him. We are thankful for the great opportunity Bobby Lewis Quarter Horses has given us to be able to advance our horse program. It has been an honor to be a team with one of the World's top horsemen, having multiple World Championships and industry setting standards. He also had taken on several in our rope horse program from start to finish, including finishing our beautiful Hes A Zippy Jack daughter Dun Driftn. After qualifying and competing in her first world show Dun Driftn continued to being rode in the Pro Rodeo circuit for a few years by 2018 World Champion Header, Levi Simpson, and then followed up her final year with Dawson Graham. She now is home and has raised 2 wonderful stud colts.

Shoutout to our farrier program, which has been with Ory Brown for 13 years. We couldn’t ask for a better farrier with so much patience for all the young horses over the years. His first job at our place we had 21 head lined up for him and Ty Stewart, well over half of them only tie broke. I’m sure glad Ory kept coming back after that! Then we have had Lyle Farqhar over the years with the tip table keeping the mares cleaned up, with Layne Smith taking over the past few years.

Our program has been strong sponsors and supporters of the Manitoba Rope Horse Futurity over the years, which began in 2013. Our horses get well highlighted by the trainers in this event, with growing competition every year. We have had several compete at the Canadian National Rope Horse Futurity in Edmonton, AB, as well as the American Rope Horse Futurity World Championship in Fort Worth, TX. This has led into sponsoring, supporting, and competing in an extensive list of roping and barrel racing events, and as well, showing our full support to the industry.

And of course, having a good relationship with our veterinarians has been important. Dr. Joe King of Virden Animal Hospital, Dr. Megan Peats of McBurney Veterinary and Dr. Chris Bell or Elders have all been main sources of keeping our horses in tip top condition.

We are proud of the years we have put into this program, and the results show in our horse herd.