Spot Hollow Farm

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Trumansburg, NY
Spot Hollow Farm

We raise purebred Jacob sheep, commercial type crossbred sheep and an assortment of other animals in the Finger Lakes of New York.

Spot Hollow Farm is located just outside Trumansburg New York in wine country along Cayuga lake. Our farm consists of 10 acres of pasture land, as well as 65 acres of leased land that, for one weekend of the year, is home to the area's famous Grassroots Festival. At Spot Hollow Farm we raise a flock of grassfed, JSBA registered Jacob sheep. Our Jacob flock consists of around 60 adult ewes and 5 ra

ms, most are 4 horned with some 2 horned as well - we have both black and lilac (gray) Jacobs in our flock. Although Jacob sheep are our main focus, we also raise show quality ADGA registered Alpine goats and bantam chickens at our farm. Jacob sheep are a rare heritage breed of sheep noted for their black and white spots and multiple horns - Jacobs can have as few as 2 horns to as many as 6 horns. Jacobs are known for their lean, mild tasting meat and excel in grassfed programs, making it an ideal choice for our farm. In addition to our grassfed meat, we also offer other products our sheep produce, including many colors of roving, raw fleeces, horns and Jacob pelts (sheepskins). We offer breeding stock as well - both Jacob sheep and Alpine goats. Our Jacobs are bred for mothering ability, horn structure, fleece quality, markings, parasite resistance and hardiness. Our flock is pastured from May until we run out of grass - usually not until January. Lambs are born in the spring, usually between March and May with some surprises arriving at other times of the year. At Spot Hollow Farm we specialize in raising grassfed lamb for sale to local costumers and hopefully soon, local stores. Our lambs are generally born on pasture and remain there with their mothers until they reach an appropriate weight (usually around October/November). During this time, the lambs are only eating grass and mother's milk - because our lambs are raised this way, they are healthier than their grainfed counterparts and produce a very lean, mild tasting meat. The meat is also healthier for human consumption when raise this way, as it has more Omega-3 fatty acids and less unhealthy fat than conventionally raise meat. To contact us, or order our some of our products, email us at [email protected] or give us a call at 607-387-5494. Farm visits available by appointment - lambing time is the most popular.

06/15/2026

Faerie is the 35th ewe to lamb. She was on the for sale list all year, but the longer she stuck around the more I thought maybe I should keep her. I had originally only planned on keeping my one favorite crossbred ewe lamb from last year, instead I decided to keep the best four and see how everyone did at lambing before making cull decisions. Unfortunately my original favorite ewe lamb slipped late term twins so I didn’t get to see how she would do, but Faerie did such an exceptional job that she just might be my new favorite. She only had a single, but it is a huge ewe lamb for a yearling and Faerie still managed just fine on her own. When I found them, she had already cleaned and fed the lamb and was mothering it like a pro. Sometimes first time mothers are a bit spooky or confused when they first have a lamb, occasionally they don’t want to follow their lambs into a jug because they are nervous and their mothering instincts haven’t fully kicked in yet - Faerie was not like that at all and dutifully followed her lamb into a smaller pen without any trouble. In addition to being the best of the first time mothers, Faerie also has about twice the udder capacity as the other yearlings who lambed. I said I wasn’t keeping any lambs from the yearlings, but her pretty reverse ewe has me tempted.

06/08/2026

Blair is ewe number 34. Blair is an accident lamb. Her mother is Beatrice, one of my crossbreds, and her father is likely a Jacob but I’m not sure exactly who. I wasn’t planning on keeping her, but since she looks so much like a Jacob, I didn’t want to just send her to auction where someone might mistake her for the real thing. I didn’t really think she was bred because she’s not one of the bigger ewe lambs from last year, so when I found Francesca with her lamb, at first I thought Blair’s lamb was a twin from her instead. When Blair came over and claimed it, I said to myself “I don’t know if I buy that…” but sure enough, it was actually her lamb. Unlike Francesca, Blair went easily into the pen after her lamb and stayed there quietly watching the show the whole time I was chasing the other ewe around. Blair is a first time mother at a year old, while Francesca is a first time mother at 2 - I definitely prefer the ewes who lamb at one year old, they seem to be better first time mothers (my theory is they remember their own mother more recently).

06/03/2026

Francesca is the 33rd ewe to lamb. Francesca is a 2 year old, but this is her first lamb. She had the lamb by herself and was tending to it just fine, but ever since Delta’s twins realized they could steal colostrum from lambing ewes, I needed to get her into a jug so her own tiny lamb could nurse without having to compete with the much older, greedy and opportunistic twins. However, another young ewe lambed at the same time as Francesca, so I decided it’d be fine to get them both into a smaller pen at once since I was out of jug space and using a “mini corral” setup to hold new ewes and lambs. The one ewe went into the pen after I set her lamb inside and left, Francesca was more wary and stood just outside calling her lamb back out. It devolved from there after that, because when I went to dive in and stop the lamb and her from leaving, she dashed off the other way back into the flock and the chase was on. Once a new mom is spooked like that, you can probably forget about her following her lamb anywhere for at least a good while. Since I needed to get her into a pen sooner rather than later, I ended up having to chase her down, tackle and drag her back to the pen with her lamb twice because the first time I didn’t get the gate fully secure before I went to give her baby back and so she smashed right into it - opening it with her momentum - and left again. Once I got her in the pen, she was a fine mother, but she’s pretty close to finding herself on my naughty list. In her defense, this is hands down the cutest lamb of the season - she looks like a toy!

05/29/2026

Lilo is number 32. Lilo is from the Bide A Wee Farm flock on the West coast. She has a kind of particular look I’ve always associated with the West coast, with the sparse markings and wide, striped 2 horns - I can think of a couple Jacob ewes in the past who had that look. One was Puddleduck Wanda from Oregon, and another was Perfect Spot Ailsa (who was not actually from the West coast, but she did live out there in the Kenleigh Acres Farm & Fiber Studio flock for a long time). Looking at all three pedigrees, they all have some Huntsburger genetics and they are all great granddaughters of a ram named Canberra Montague - Lilo actually has him on both sides of her pedigree. She reminded me of those ewes, which is why I decided I wanted her hauled clear across the United States to be here. Her first lamb (Spot Hollow Kinzhal) was a ram sired by a past favorite ram (Spot Hollow Tatarus), and he is now the sire of some of this year’s lambs. Last year Lilo had a set of “accident” crossbred lambs, this year she has purebred Jacob lambs, but unfortunately the ram lamb didn’t have enough color to register, so he is now a wether. The ewe on the other hand is nicely marked, so hopefully she can go to a breeding home and spread her West coast genetics around on this coast like Lilo is.

05/17/2026

Hazel is ewe number 31. Hazel is the only daughter of Heidi the Cheviot remaining in the flock, hence the H name. Hazel is a bit of a crazy mix because both her parent breeds are known for being a bit wild, Hazel is wary but she isn’t as wild as Heidi was. Hazel used to have 4 more prominent horns like her Jacob sire, but she has broken several and needed to have one trimmed back so it wasn’t forming a perfect “hook” that she could potentially get caught in my net fence or elsewhere. Despite both parents being colored, Hazel has two plain white twin ewes that look more like their Cheviot grandmother than either of their actual parents. She had them all clean and fed and tucked into this corner when I found them, they are still a bit damp in this photo - their ears have perked up even more since then.

05/13/2026

Pearl is the 30th ewe to lamb. Pearl was the first one to have twins after Quarrel lost her lamb, but it was almost a week later, so I wasn’t hopeful about a cross foster. I caught Quarral and put her in a pen with Pearl and her twins to see if she was interested in the lambs at this point. She was when they were still wet, but between Pearl being aggressive and so much time having passed since Quarrel lambed, I decided it wasn’t worth the risk of orphaning one of Pearl’s twins in an attempt to graft one onto Quarrel, so I just let Pearl have her own two lambs and I let Quarrel go. If I had been able to stay home and monitor the situation, maybe it would have worked out differently, but at least both lambs still ended up with a mother in this case. Pearl is nicely marked ewe with about 50% color, but almost every year she has a set of miss-matched twins like this one - with one very dark and one very light - unfortunately one is almost always too far beyond the acceptable color range for registration. This year it’s the light one, although she could still qualify as an AC category ewe, which is “Appendix Certified” and one step below full registration, a category for a ewe who is considered to be purebred but fails inspection for one reason or another - usually something like not enough color or being too freckled. There’s not really anything wrong with an AC ewe, especially when it’s for something like “not enough spots” because that’s more random chance than something like “wool forward of the horns” (a sign of crossbreeding), but it would be nice if they were both marked more like the pretty lilac twin.

05/07/2026

Roulette is ewe number 29. Roulette is Ire’s daughter and one of very offspring from Spot Hollow Tatarus, a favorite ram and direct descendant of Athena - my original Jacob ewe. This ram lamb looks a lot like Tatarus, and he’s already showing a lot of promise from a very young age like him as well. Roulette had him dry and fed when I found them on a nice actually spring-like morning. I liked this photo because she has one eye on the dog and you can tell because she has her one ear cocked that way. What you can’t see in this photo are Roulette’s fancy leg markings, one of her most notable traits is her lack of freckles despite the flashy leg markings - in a lot of cases, Jacob sheep with a lot of color on their legs will also show some amount of freckling their fleeces. Freckling is tiny black marks in the white areas of the fleece, which is undesirable because in high concentrations these small dots start to make the animal appear a muddy gray color overall, as opposed to the “black and white spotted sheep” the breed standard calls for. Roulette’s boy is definitely one to watch this year as a potential flocksire prospect, he may even end up staying here.

05/04/2026

Minute is the 28th ewe to lamb. Minute is a ewe who came with Saugeen from Sweetgrass Farm in Michigan. I don’t often buy ewes, but I had transport available because I also had a ram lamb coming from Georgia at the time, so I figured I may as well get some ewes since they were “on the way” - it doesn’t make sense geographically, but they were hitching a ride from one show to another trailer and it was as “on the way” as it gets going from GA to MI to NY… I had always admired Sweetgrass Siskiwit, who was a really nice 4 horned ram with crisp black markings and flashy legs - Minute is a few generations removed from him, but she still has him on both sides of her pedigree, as well as his signature crisp black markings and flashy legs. Her boy this year doesn’t have the flashy legs, but he definitely has the crisp black markings. Minute had him all cleaned off and fed when I found them, she is an excellent mom in addition to being a stocking-legged beauty.

05/01/2026

Fay is ewe number 27. Fay is an older ewe, and my only daughter left from Fiona - one of my two original crossbred ewes from Cornell. Fiona was the more Finn looking of the two, but she likely still had some Dorset in there as well. Fay has had twins the last few years, and I expected her to do the same again this year…but she just had this one huge single ram lamb. She had him by herself despite him being so big. There were a few moments when I thought I might have to help her a bit, but she managed fairly quickly on her own - it always feels like forever watching them push. After she successfully had one lamb, I decided to leave her alone for a bit to see if she’d have a second one before I moved her. When I came back 20 minutes later, I realized some opportunist older lambs had taken advantage of Fay’s hormone rush and were stealing colostrum from her while she looked on happily. That was apparently all it took for Fay to bond to them completely, because despite separating them for weeks after that, Fay just keeps letting them nurse. After I jugged her up with just her own ram lamb, she continued to cry to the older pair of twins outside. I thought she would forget about them eventually if I just kept them separate long enough, but every time I let her back out, she would go and immediately feed those older twins. She drove me nuts doing this, because I was afraid if she was feeding those older twins, she wouldn’t have enough milk to feed her own newborn lamb. At one point, I tried letting her out for a day but I had to separate her again, because by the end of the day the mother of the older twins was crying to her lambs to come nurse and they just wouldn’t do it because they were already full of Fay’s milk… I kept Fay and her lamb separate for almost 3 weeks before I finally gave up and let them do whatever. So far, Fay’s ram lamb is big enough to compete with his “fake brothers”, but Fay has put herself dangerously close to the cull list for driving me insane…

04/30/2026

Nyet is the 26th one to lamb. I had been worrying about this one lambing since last fall when I put her into her half-brother’s breeding group. They both have very strong 4 horn genetics and since it was a line-breeding cross, it would be even more concentrated genetics. That could have caused issues, but I was more worried about her because she was a favorite and the only daughter I have from Unzicker Keats. If you raise sheep, you know picking favorites is a no-no for superstitious reasons, because it seems to always be those ones with the absolute worst luck. The previous “crop favorite” ewe did not survive having her first lamb, a large 4 horned ram. I kept thinking “I hope you have a ewe lamb…”. Luckily, all that worrying was for nothing because she had a nice, big, healthy ewe lamb just fine by herself. The lamb so far looks very much like Tatarus, the common ancestor in this line-breeding cross and a favorite ram that I lost too soon. She will be interesting to watch develop and see how much she takes after Tatarus, which is the main point of line-breeding. Here is Nyet lounging with one leg wrapped around her lamb, I don’t know how she even managed that pose.

Address

2586 Agard Road
Trumansburg, NY
14886

Telephone

+16073875494

Website

http://www.spothollowfarm.com/

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