Waldorf Farm has been in the Bilinski family since 1995. What follows is the record: the property, the horses, and a veterinarian who spent his career building the New York breeding program from both sides of it.
Waldorf Farm sits on hundreds of acres of rolling pasture in Columbia County, New York, roughly forty minutes south of Saratoga. Jerry and Darlene Bilinski bought it in 1995, restored its original name, and have run it as a working Thoroughbred nursery ever since: foaling mares, boarding broodmares, standing stallions, and preparing young horses for the sales.
Jerry is a Cornell-trained equine veterinarian with more than forty years in practice, a former chairman of the New York State Racing and Wagering Board, and a sixteen-year Cornell trustee. Kenny Toye has managed the farm day to day for years. Between them, almost nothing that can happen to a horse on a farm in upstate New York has not already happened here.
Chapter one
Jerry Bilinski grew up in Columbia County, a few miles from the property he would eventually own. His father farmed and dealt cattle. Neither of his parents finished grade school.
He left for Cornell in 1963 and came back a veterinarian, class of 1967 and DVM in 1969. The practice came first, then the farm. By 1990 he was the veterinarian at Equine Medical Center in North Chatham, a few minutes up the road from where he was born.
Chapter two
In 1995 Jerry and Darlene Bilinski bought the property. It had carried other names over the years. They gave it back its original one: Waldorf Farm.
That detail says most of what needs saying about how they have run it since. They began standing stallions and boarding broodmares, and thirty years later the farm is still doing both, on hundreds of acres of rolling pasture and in barns built to hold heat through a Hudson Valley winter.
Chapter three
Waldorf has stood stallions for other people's programs and its own. Pollard's Vision and Bustin Stones stood here. In 2021 the Grade 2 winner Mr. Monomoy, a half-brother to champion Monomoy Girl, began his stud career at Waldorf for Climax Stallions, Michael Dubb and Madaket Stables.
Jerry breeds as well as boards. Senbei, the Grade 3 winner of the Belmont Turf Sprint and earner of more than $700,000, was bred by Bilinski.
The everyday work is larger than the headlines. As of 2021 the farm foaled between 105 and 110 mares a year, with roughly 200 horses on the property. It is one of the busiest nurseries in New York, and almost none of that work is visible from the road.
Chapter four
In May 1995, the same year he bought the farm, the New York State Senate confirmed Jerry Bilinski to the New York State Racing and Wagering Board. He later served as its chairman.
The service kept going. Special Advisor to the New York State Senate Majority on racing and gambling matters from 1997 to 2008. Chair of Albany Law School's Saratoga Institute on Racing and Gaming Law program from 2012. Elected to the board of the Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation in 2014. Cornell University trustee from 2003 to 2019, sixteen years, the longest run of any graduate of its College of Veterinary Medicine.
He spent those years arguing that New York breeding was worth building, while running a farm that proved it.
Horses foaled and raised on this ground, and the titles they went on to earn.
Iron Orchard
Champion 2YO Filly
Pandagate
3YO Male Champion
Maple Leaf Mel
NY-bred Horse of the Year, Champion 3YO Filly and Female Sprinter
Dr Ardito
NY-bred Older Dirt Male
Bold Journey
Champion Male Sprinter
Senbei
NY-bred 2YO
Owner
A Cornell-trained veterinarian with more than forty years of equine practice in New York, Jerry has served the sport from inside the regulatory system as well as from the foaling barn: chairman of the New York State Racing and Wagering Board, advisor to the State Senate on racing matters, and a director of the Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation.
He and Darlene bought this farm in 1995, restored its original Waldorf name, and built it into one of the busiest nurseries in the state. Cornell made him a trustee for sixteen years; he and Darlene gave back two endowed veterinary scholarships and a teaching laboratory that carries their names.
Farm Manager
Kenny Toye runs Waldorf. Foaling season, the daily care of every mare and foal on the property, arrivals and shipping, the vet and farrier schedule, and the call a client makes at ten at night when something does not look right. If you board a horse here, Kenny is the person who knows your horse.
He came to it honestly. Kenny grew up on his family’s Washington breeding farm, the son of trainer Joe Toye, who has run horses at Emerald Downs since the track opened in 1996 and won its training title in 2021. His sister works in racing out of Kentucky. Kenny has spent his working life in barns rather than offices, and has managed Waldorf for roughly a decade.
He is a pedigree man as well as a horseman. Kenny works the sales on behalf of Waldorf clients, walks yearlings, and reads catalog pages the way other people read the sports section. Ask him what he likes and the answer comes with a reason attached.
Some years ago Kenny was diagnosed with Stage 3 colon cancer. He went through twenty-five rounds of radiation and twelve chemotherapy infusions, and he has since written publicly that racing was what carried him through it. He came back to the farm and to the work. It is worth knowing about the person watching your mare at two in the morning.
