Old New York Police Department horses done with pounding the pavement get to amble away their retirement years on gentle grass here.

No shoes. No saddles. The only honking heard on this ranch two hours north of Manhattan comes from geese.

It seems idyllic — except for the legal fight between New York City and the private ranch’s owners.

The city accused the biotech company that owns the ranch of improperly caring for the horses. Lawyers for the company, Breonics, Inc., deny the charge. They claim it’s the city that shirked its responsibility, and have won a key ruling in state court.

As legal proceedings continue, one result is already clear: The city has begun looking to put New York’s equinest out to other pastures.

“For their age, they’re in pretty good shape,” Breonics president Ernest Green said recently as he walked among 30 horses grazing on sunny morning.

“We actually spent a lot of our own money keeping these animals fed and keeping them as best we could.”

Horses come here because of a historical quirk. New York City opened a tuberculosis sanatorium a century ago and kept horses on site for their blood, which could be used for vaccinations. The sanatorium is long gone, but the Mounted Unit has been retiring police horses here since the early ’80s, according to city officials.

In 1983, the city sold the land, but included a covenant in the lease that required the buyer, Otisville Biotech Inc., to care for the old horses for as long as the city maintained mounted patrols, plus 10 years. In return, the company could draw horses’ blood for biological products. The covenant carried over when Breonics bought the land in 2001, though Green said they never drew horses’ blood.

Current troubles began last year.

City officials say they were tipped off by neighbors that horses on the ranch were so skinny their ribs showed. After an inspection, the city filed a lawsuit against Breonics alleging breach of contract. The city also began paying up more than $140,000 for horse care.

“We have separate contracts to make sure that they are adequately fed with hay and grain, and we have a separate veterinarian assigned to them under a separate contract, as well as our own people going up once a week,” said NYPD spokesman Paul Browne.

Green is emphatic that the horses were always well cared for, even as his company faced financial difficulties.

He welcomed visitors on a recent morning to demonstrate that the ranch, though shopworn, had clean stalls, green grass and fresh hay. Duffy, Doc Fried, Major and the 27 other old horses weren’t skinny enough to show any ribs, though Green said laminitis is common among the horses, since they clomped along city streets for so many years.

Green said New York City complained only after he approached them to help create a not-for-profit organization to care for the horses to relieve the financial burden on his company. He said his dealings with the city before last year were mostly limited to drivers dropping off more horses.

Green’s lawyer, Joseph Ranni, compares the city to a “deadbeat parent,” still paying less than it should to care for the horses. City officials say the horses’ well-being is their paramount concern.

A judge this summer sided with Breonics on the issue of horse care responsibility, ruling that the “obligation has run for more than 21 years and has now created an onerous financial burden” on the company.

But acting state Supreme Court Justice Elaine Slobod also said Breonics had a “continued implied obligation” to the city and left it to the two parties to settle the issue, whether it be through conveying the land to the city or some other means.

A hearing is scheduled for Nov. 9