Dun Roamin Farm LLC

Dun Roamin Farm LLC Our philosophy starts with equine well-being first, always. At Dun Roamin' Farm, our focus is two-fold: our people and our horses.

We will work closely with you to ensure you get the saddle time you need and your horse receives the care they deserve. Whether you are new to the saddle, a seasoned rider, or just looking for a place to fit in, we will help you achieve your goals. We offer horseback riding lessons and services to all ages and our goal is to provide a positive and safe environment for you and your family to engage in. When you are here, you become family.

The art of horsemanship goes beyond just riding. Those who walk into the barn and check on all the horses, not just thei...
08/08/2024

The art of horsemanship goes beyond just riding. Those who walk into the barn and check on all the horses, not just their own, or pick up a broom or pitchfork to put away something that isn't theirs, demonstrate an energy that shows they are there for not just the horses but also for leaving something better than they found it. This practice, when applied to interacting with your horse (or even people), builds a strong foundation and is a great skill. The concept of leaving it better than you found it can be quite profound if you think about it.

A day well spent, two gray horses, two friends, and several wine-tasting stations! What an amazing trail ride through hi...
07/27/2024

A day well spent, two gray horses, two friends, and several wine-tasting stations! What an amazing trail ride through hills, fields, and orchards.

🌞Welcome the dawn with open arms and embrace the gift of a new day—a fresh start, full of hope and opportunity. With the...
06/18/2024

🌞Welcome the dawn with open arms and embrace the gift of a new day—a fresh start, full of hope and opportunity.

With the rising sun, take a moment to inhale the serenity around you and ground yourself, no matter where you may be.

How do you find peace in your daily life? 🌞🐴

04/23/2024

A great opportunity!

The truth and value to these words are invaluable.
04/16/2024

The truth and value to these words are invaluable.

Don’t practice your way into a fight

Many people are eager learners: studious, dedicated and linear thinking. We’ve been conditioned to believe hard work is what leads to success, and if something isn’t working, do it more and harder.

While it’s true that hard work is essential to success, there are many times with horses where more is not better - where less but more accurate work, not more work itself, is the best plan.

When we struggle with something, it’s easy to want to practice it until it’s perfect, but often in the search for
Practice til perfection, we tire the horse, bore the horse, confuse the horse, or fail to reward their efforts. Many times a horse will achieve the goal we sought out, and yet we continue to practice, unsatisfied. The horse can easily revert, worsen, or tune out at this point.

One of the hardest lessons to teach people is to leave well enough alone- people are often seeking for one more time, one more exercise, just a bit more…but there is a thin line between just enough and too much.

Practice the elements of the “thing,” get them improved, and then move on. Quite often we don’t need to practice “the thing” itself to achieve it, just the pieces that go into it -

Anyone can practice the same inaccurate work over and over without too much effort-
A thinking horseman seeks to work smarter, with more accurate work, but less of it.

The definition of a close call when you own horses in New York. This is how we live life on the edge - talk about adrena...
04/14/2024

The definition of a close call when you own horses in New York. This is how we live life on the edge - talk about adrenaline junkies.

The life we have chosen is not easy, but it’s special. It's special because we are given the opportunity to love and hon...
04/13/2024

The life we have chosen is not easy, but it’s special. It's special because we are given the opportunity to love and honor these animals the way they deserve. Some days are harder than the rest, today was a hard day as we mourn the lost of beloved family member, Davidson.

Sometimes loss is unexpected. Sometimes love means making a hard decision. We simply don’t always get to choose; we would never want to choose loss, but often in this life with horses, loss is the most loving choice.

Davidson was a dream for us which came true when his mom, Harley entered our lives. Davey was curious, all legs, always convinced there was something around the corner. He was soft, kind and the class clown. We were blessed to have witnessed his entire life—a beautiful 12 years. We got to watch him grow, learn, and even become a teacher himself.

There will be a void in our herd for some time, and with this loss comes pain. A pain that won’t be ignored but instead honored because it comes from hearts full of love. We will honor this loss and carry this love forward. We will take the lessons learned and continue to be better for those to come. Every day, we are presented with opportunities to learn and to love. Today, we learned to love despite the pain of loss. Today, we did better. Today, we laid to rest a special soul. Today, that soul was able to say goodbye with the dignity and grace he deserved.

Thank you Davidson for giving us the chance to learn from you and to love you. Thank you for your beauty, your forgiveness and your grace. You will be with us every day forward.

04/11/2024
Beauty in every stride, grace in every movement, and grit in every challenge.
03/28/2024

Beauty in every stride, grace in every movement, and grit in every challenge.

❄️ With Marie’s trusty partner, Mallory, out of town for Mother Nature’s late March winter kiss, these troops were calle...
03/23/2024

❄️ With Marie’s trusty partner, Mallory, out of town for Mother Nature’s late March winter kiss, these troops were called in as reinforcements! Show them some love for stepping in when needed. 🐾

🌟 Manifesting winter away as the worms come out to play, horses shed their furry glitter, and the days grow longer. 🌱✨  ...
03/05/2024

🌟 Manifesting winter away as the worms come out to play, horses shed their furry glitter, and the days grow longer. 🌱✨ 🌟

Excellent information for the coming season!
03/05/2024

Excellent information for the coming season!

🌿🌱 THE LOW DOWN ON SHORT VS LONG GRASS FOR HORSES🌱🌿

Equine nutrition has progressed in leaps and bounds these past few years. I am pleasantly surprised at how quickly things are moving in the right direction.

That said, I still hear people talk about how they want their horse to lose weight so they put it in a paddock with, ‘nothing in it’. The ‘nothing’ they refer to is usually very short, stressed grass of one or two species, with a decent spread of w**ds popping up for good measure.

Understanding the effects of grazing on short grass versus longer grass is crucial for any horse, but particularly for those with endocrine issues or a history of laminitis (usually caused by endocrine issues).

Somewhat ironically, these horses are often the ones who are purposely put on short, overgrazed grasses with the objective of keeping weight off.

🌱There are many reasons why short grasses cause issues:

⚫️ Short grass is constantly trying to grow. Therefore it will store its sugars and starches (Non-Structural Carbohydrates or NSCs) to prepare for improved growing conditions. Growing conditions won’t improve as your horse will continually keep eating it down, but the sugars will stay there.
⚫️ Because NCSs are predominantly at the base of the plant, each mouthful has a high NSC:fibre ratio. Typically the sugars are lower, and fibre higher, towards the top of the grasses, so the longer the grass, the less sugar and higher in fibre it is. A high fibre, low sugar diet is what a horse’s gastrointestinal system is designed to eat.
⚫️ The higher the grass’s fibre content, the lower the NSC intake will be.
⚫️ Eating longer grass means the horse has to chew more. This not only slows down their intake, but increases saliva production. Saliva helps to buffer stomach acid and helps to prevent ulcers and other gastrointestinal issues.
⚫️ A healthy (non-metabolic) horse eats until they have a specific amount of fibre in their stomach. Eating grass with a high-sugar and low fibre ratio means a horse consumes a lot of high-sugar grass before it feels satiated. This is why you might see horses with ad-lib hay standing around in the shade more than you will see horses with short grass doing the same. Horses with access to high-fibre hay can go and eat, then rest. Horses that need to eat all day to feel full will rest less.
⚫️ Because a horse’s front teeth (incisors) work so well, they can eat enough to stay fat on grasses that are 3cm - 4cm. Ponies can do the same on grasses that are even shorter (1cm - 2cm).
⚫️ Grasses grown specifically for lawns have their growth points very close to the ground so the plant can cope with being kept constantly short. These grasses have been selected specifically for this. Overgrazing results in only the 'lawn' type grasses surviving - so the result is a monoculture; just one or two species of grass. In addition, lawn type grasses are typically not ideal grasses for your horses to be eating a lot of.
⚫️ Horses are more likely to pick up sand while grazing short grass than they are on longer grass.

🌿 Property owners who want to take care of their paddocks should also keep in mind that:

⚫️ Short grass plants have short root systems that cannot reach far down in the soil for nutrients. A short root system results in much less organic matter in the soil, causing soil compaction and poor drainage (not to mention less carbon sequestration).
⚫️ Short, sparsely grassed areas in a paddock quickly turn to mud in wet weather and become dusty very quickly in dry weather. Both lead to soil erosion.
Short grass plants are not as able to outcompete certain w**ds as longer grasses are.

🌱 How long is short?

Clients need to fill in a form to get a diet consultation and I ask for a description of their pasture as part of the process (both written and photographic). I was once astonished at the difference between what they tell me the grass is like, and what it is actually like.

A lot of owners describe grass that’s around 3cms long as, ‘heaps of really good grass’. Because of this misunderstanding of what good grass is, they then don’t offer any additional hay. I end up having a lot of discussions with clients about grass. Sometimes we chat more about pasture and hay than the diet itself which is understandable as grass is complicated!

Short grass is generally shorter than 5cm (2.5 inches). However you need to look at the average height across your pasture as you will (hopefully!) have several species of grass available to your horses. There may also be areas they use as toilets which they won’t eat unless they’re almost starving. While 5cms is pretty short, in reality, on many horse properties, the grasses are as short as 1 or 2 cm.

Many horse owners think a paddock full of grass that is 5 cm long would be regarded as too long. At 5 cm, the plant is just about reaching the stage where it has 2 to 3 leaves, and it can now start to make a rapid recovery, using its stored sugars/starches for growth; at less than 5 cm it becomes stressed.


🌿 Why is longer grass better for horses?

⚫️ Longer grasses are healthier and typically not stressed (so they have less NSCs).
Taller pasture plants have a higher fibre-to-sugar ratio than short grass. As mentioned above, this is ideal for a healthy gastrointestinal tract.
⚫️ Longer grass typically allows for more biodiversity (i.e. less monoculture).
⚫️ Longer grasses have a longer and thicker root system. This results in more healthy nutrients being brought up from deeper layers in the soil.
⚫️ Longer/thicker roots equal better soil protection which means less mud or dust. Obviously this is good for the ground and for your horse (less mud is better for a slew of reasons), but it also means plants may be able to be grazed in wetter conditions for a longer period of time.
⚫️ Longer grass shades out and outcompetes many w**d species.
⚫️ When the roots are longer the plant can ‘trades' some sugars for other nutrients such as amino acids. When the grass is short and stressed, it hangs onto excess sugars.
⚫️ The horse has to eat from the top; this means they need to eat the higher fibre, lower sugar part before it can get to the higher sugar part of the plant (at the bottom of the plant).
⚫️ The horse has to chew more, creating saliva to buffer stomach acid.
⚫️ Horses walk more when grazing longer, more diverse pastures as they seek out different plants.
⚫️ Longer grasses mean horses are essentially also browsing, not just grazing, this variety of eating postures is good for them biomechanically.
⚫️ Horses pick up their feet more if they live in paddocks with longer grasses, this is also good for them biomechanically.

🌿 Why is longer grass better for your property?

⚫️ Longer grasses shade the soil in hot, dry conditions. This keeps it cooler and reduces evaporation. This, plus the increase in soil organic matter, helps hold water in the soil for longer. This means your grass can keep growing even when it hasn’t rained in a while.
⚫️ Longer grasses provide a habitat for insects, small mammals/reptiles, and ground-nesting birds.
⚫️ With their longer/thicker root systems, taller grasses sequester more carbon than short grasses and even faster than trees! This is improved when the plants are repeatedly grazed and then allowed to regrow (as part of a rotational grazing system), as it effectively pumps carbon into the soil.
⚫️ Taller pasture plants keep the soil warmer in cold weather.


🌿 How long is long?

In a rotational grazing system of land management, the grass is regarded as tall enough to resume grazing when it is approximately 15cm, or just before it goes to seed. When the grass plants have been grazed down to an average height of 5 cm, horses should be removed and the grass given the chance to rest and recuperate.

Won’t free access to long grass make my horse fat/ter?

This answer to this question requires a whole other very long article and is dependent on many other factors. However, provided you do it sensibly, then in my experience, no.

Of course you can’t just let your horse have free access to endless lush, early spring grass, especially if you have high sugar grass species such as rye. If however, you have grasses that are lower in sugars such as fog, and/or you wait until it’s a little drier then your horse is less likely to gain weight, AND it’s a whole lot better for your horse’s gut AND also for the pasture itself.

If your horse has had their grazing restricted to overgrazed, short grasses for a long time (particularly if they also haven’t had access to hay) then you need to make a slow transition to longer grasses. If you suddenly give them access to long, lush grass then they are very likely to gorge and then they will gain weight.

🌱 What about horses on agistment?

Having a horse on agistment makes things more difficult, but not impossible. Ask your agistment owner if you can rig up some temporary fencing (i.e. pigtails and tape) within your paddock to rest part of it, or set up a track system so you can have longer grasses. Setting up a track next to your existing permanent fencing also encourages more incidental movement and means you can restrict grazing at the height of spring and then allow your horse onto the longer grasses when it’s safe to do so. I suggest approaching them from a ‘paddock/pasture preservation’ point of view and use all the above reasons as to why it will be better for their land, as well as for your horse.

*credit to the Equiculture website which was used as a resource for this article

🦄 A unique opportunity at our private, family-owned horse farm has opened up for a retirement stall. Why retire your hor...
02/28/2024

🦄 A unique opportunity at our private, family-owned horse farm has opened up for a retirement stall.

Why retire your horse with us?

☮️Absolute peace of mind.

Owning a horse is a journey of their lifetime, and we believe in providing the highest quality of personalized care from the first day they become ours to the very last day we get to be with them.

☀️Large pasture rotation
🌻Maximum turnout time
🫶Small and large herd options
🍀Bodywork and rehabilitation services
🌿24/7 access to forage

Your horse will have the friends, freedom, and forage to enjoy a blissful retirement. Our priority is to ensure top-notch care for every horse, regardless of where they are in their journey.

Message us today for more information.

✨🩵Happy Valentine’s Day! We hope your day is full of love and happiness and you spend it with people who love you as muc...
02/14/2024

✨🩵Happy Valentine’s Day! We hope your day is full of love and happiness and you spend it with people who love you as much as Freddie loves Enya. 🤍✨

☀️Discover what makes your heart sing and hold on to it. Don’t let the noise of the world drown out the melody. Find you...
02/07/2024

☀️Discover what makes your heart sing and hold on to it. Don’t let the noise of the world drown out the melody. Find your peace in the simple things, like a horse among the birds and the sun. 🎶

🌟✨ Sunday morning wisdom ✨🌟 As we step into a new week here at Dun Roamin Farm, let's remember this illustration, “looki...
02/04/2024

🌟✨ Sunday morning wisdom ✨🌟 As we step into a new week here at Dun Roamin Farm, let's remember this illustration, “looking for results can destroy the try but looking for try can build the results." 🌱💪 Embrace the journey, celebrate the effort, and let success follow naturally. Happy Sunday, everyone! 🌞🍃

01/23/2024

I don’t know who needs to hear this, but you are doing just fine.

Stop beating yourself up for not riding when it’s freezing cold, pitch black and raining. It’s ok (and normal) to have no motivation at this time of year. It doesn’t make you a bad rider (or a bad owner).

Stop feeling guilty that your horse isn’t even nearly competition fit yet. Take your time and make your plan, who cares if you’re not ready for the first event? There’s a whole calendar to chose from.

Stop agonising over the fact you haven’t spent the whole winter training. Riders need a break and horses do to, you’ll probably find your horse comes back better than if they’d spent the whole winter being hammered in clinics and lessons anyway.

Stop comparing yourself to riders who have more facilities, more time or a totally different set of circumstances to you. Everyone is on their own track and has their own goals, so eyes ahead and focus on yours.

Stop telling yourself that your horse “deserves better” or is “wasted” with you. As long as your horse is fed and warm, they are quite happy, riding does not complete their life.

Winter is hard. It’s cold, it’s wet, it’s dark and it feels never ending and berating yourself for everything you aren’t doing or feel you should be doing won’t make it any easier, so cut yourself some slack and just take a breath.

You are doing just fine.

01/20/2024

FUN FACT FRIDAY! Are you familiar with the many adaptations that help your horse stay warm during the cold winter months?

🌾 Hindgut digestion of hay produces the most heat, acting as a small furnace inside of the horse. This is why free choice, good quality hay is so important in the winter.

💪 Horses have a huge muscle mass and muscle activity produces heat. This includes running and playing and even shivering if their body temperature starts to drop. It is important to remember that these activities also will result in a bigger caloric demand so free choice hay and in some cases, grain, is often needed.

🧥 To blanket or not to blanket is a constant debate but either way, as it starts to get cold your horse will grow a thicker coat. If you decide to leave your horse unblanketed you may notice that they look “fluffy”. This is due to a phenomenon called piloerection where the hair stands up to better trap air within. Two layers of the coat also help with warmth. The inner layer is softer and has air pockets to create an insulating layer. The outer layer is coarse and has oils that keep moisture from penetrating the insulating layer and keep the horse warm.

⚖️ Wild horses go into the winter heavier than ideal and the fat serves as an extra layer of insulation. However, if a horse is going to be kept heavily blanketed and in a barn during the cold weather months this is unnecessary and can lead to obesity related issues.

🦵Their distal limbs (below the knees and hocks) are made of mostly bones and tendons, tissues that are resistant to the cold temperatures.

🦶The hooves have an alternative route of blood circulation through larger vessels that can be used in low temperatures. This is why horses can stand in snow without detrimental effects.

👃A horse’s nose has a robust blood supply and is rounded so that it is less susceptible to frostbite than a human’s nose.

Courtesy of the AAEP Horse Owner Education Committee

❄️Don't wait until spring to jump on the wellness train; this cold snap is the perfect time to be attentive to your hors...
01/15/2024

❄️Don't wait until spring to jump on the wellness train; this cold snap is the perfect time to be attentive to your horse's foundation - THEIR BODY! 🩵

✨ From enhanced flexibility to reduced tension, these simple techniques improve your horse's well-being. Boost circulation for improved health, prevent injuries, and strengthen your bond. 💖

Explore the power of hands-on care with many DIY bodywork options!

** Grooming and Currying** Regular grooming not only keeps your horse clean but also serves as a form of massage, promoting relaxation and improved circulation.

**Stretching Exercises** Gentle stretches for your horse's legs and neck can enhance flexibility. Consult with a professional to learn safe and effective stretching techniques.

**Joint Flexion** Lift each of your horse's legs, gently flexing and extending the joints. This simple exercise promotes flexibility and joint health.

Always be attentive to your horse's responses, never go beyond their capabilities, and if in doubt, consult a professional 🐴✨

01/10/2024
“Winter knows to hush, still, listen, so the soul can speak.” ❄️☃️⬇️ what are you doing on this whimsical winter day?
01/07/2024

“Winter knows to hush, still, listen, so the soul can speak.” ❄️☃️

⬇️ what are you doing on this whimsical winter day?

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428 Vanderhoff Road
Millport, NY
14864

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Our Story

At Dun Roamin' Farm, our focus is two-fold: our people and our horses.

We established Dun Roamin Farm in 1995, formerly a dairy farm, it started as little more than an unfenced pasture and neglected cow barn. We quickly cleaned up the grounds, renovated the barn, and began moving horses in. Today, the farm has 25 stalls and has served more than 100 riders with lessons and stall leasing services.

We have a passion for horses and humans, it is this passion that led us to open Dun Roamin Farm. Together, we oversee the horses, maintain schedules for all students and volunteers, as well as lead several group and individual riding lessons each week. It is not unusual to see the entire family working in and around the barn on any given day.

We have an exciting vision to continue to grow our farm, in the process we hope to bring a positive agricultural and country experience to you and your family. Join our journey and become part of our barn family.