Dozens of people from the software company Benchling Inc. from San Francisco were connected to a video call with a special guest when the meeting quickly came out of the script.
Benchling paid Sweet Farm, a 20-acre animal sanctuary, to spice up the virtual gathering with a video of animal feed, including Paco, a 5-meter rescue blade. When the sanctuary’s co-founder, Nate Salpeter, got up too quickly, an astonished Paco retaliated, splashing him in the face with a spitting mouth.
“He took everyone carefully, especially Nate,” said Yujia Zhao, an account manager at Benchling. The call burst out laughing.
“They have a pretty wide range,” Mr Salpeter said. “It smelled a lot of hay.”
Share your thoughts
Have you had close meetings with animals on corporate Zoom calls? Join the conversation below.
The repetitive virtual encounters of the last year have affected morale in many jobs. So companies hire four-legged guests – sheep, goats, turtles, llamas, bearded dragons and more – to paint smiles on tired employees’ faces. Hosting video calls for animals has become a profitable income stream for many farms, sanctuaries or zoos.
Animals do not always play together. The chicks squeak over the guests, the goats nibble their fingers, the cows gallop. So farmers have become experts at pampering their talent. They found themselves shampooing wool, forbidding trouble, blackmailing with delicacies and scratches on their bellies – anything to keep the animals happy and performing to the fullest.
Quilley Nelson the hedgehog from Tiny Tails to You is taking a bath.
Photo:
Tiny Tails To You
“We give hedgehogs baths, which is very nice,” said Chelsea Phillips, founder of Tiny Tails to You. “We have baby shampoo, which is good for them, but you want to follow this at the end with a spray of olive oil, because they can dry very easily.”
Tiny Tails, a virtual zoo in Austin, Texas, offers a full tour – hedgehogs, chinchillas, rabbits, chickens, turtles and more, all competing for attention – with hangouts starting at $ 65. It was a way to increase revenue when visits stopped last spring.
One of the most mischievous animals of Tiny Tails is Jeffrey Gecko, who, if kept too close to the laptop during calls, jumps on the screen. “It’s a bit of a wild card,” Ms. Phillips said. Now, I’m keeping two-year-old Jeffrey away, so he’s not tempted to bombard technology.
Nate Salpeter makes a Goat2Meeting call with Piggie Smalls and Piggie Sue.
Photo:
Sweet Farm
Stephanie Prevost, chief operating officer at Vendr Inc., which helps companies buy and renew software, brought her three children together for a social relationship with Tiny Tails.
Things got chaotic when the 13-year-old Knuckles Tortellini turtle appeared. “It’s so stupid, but the turtle at the end pooped on the table, and the adults and children were laughing so hard,” said Ms. Prevost. People still joke about it on Slack.
In response, Ms. Phillips said she now feeds the animals long beforehand to avoid unwanted accidents.
Mr. T, aka Knuckles Tortellini, a red-legged tortoise from Tiny Tails to You.
Photo:
Liz Moskowitz
Alison Johnson at Bowbridge Alpacas Scotland in North-East Fife, UK, is constantly chasing her herd. A trained optician, Mrs. Johnson obtained her first alpaca in 2015. She charges £ 39 ($ 55) for a 30-minute tour and an adoption package.
Six-year-old Balthazar, a wind-blown Huacaya alpaca, is the most vicious member of the herd and tends to influence others. On a call with Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co., he continued to wander away from the room. Soon enough, the alpacas were moving around the paddock. Mrs. Johnson had to run to the end of the field to catch them.
“By the time he returned, they had wandered to the other side,” said Kirsi Swinton, an executive assistant at HPE.
“It keeps me fit and healthy,” said Johnson.
Alpacas from Bowbridge Alpacas Scotland to a video call.
Photo:
Kirsi Swinton
Mr. Saltpeter’s sweet farm has over 150 rescued animals, including pigs, turkeys, cows, chickens, sheep, horses and goats. These days, a ten-minute “Goat-2-Meeting” – a word game for GoToMeeting conferencing software by LogMeIn Inc. – with unlimited guests costs $ 100, helping raise money for Sweet Farm and a collection of other animal sanctuaries. Sweet Farm made over 8,000 calls.
At a Zoom with Mel Venner from Instinct Performance, the goat Elizabeth was more interested in her lunch.
Photo:
Jem Bartholomew
Goats can’t always be expected to behave either. Farmer Dot McCarthy used many of them from her workforce of about 40 people in Zoom calls to raise more than £ 50,000 ($ 70,000) for her Cronkshaw Fold farm in Lancashire, England. The money allowed him to hire five new part-time employees. It now intends to invest in sustainable technology, such as solar panels and electric vehicles.
People can invite goats to video calls – 5 GBP for five minutes – and even create personalized messages for the goats to eat using paper and edible ink (10 GBP).
Several times, the goats chased her away and chewed the paper snack before joining the Zoom. “So, if you’re ever late for a call, that’s because we had to go rewrite the note,” Ms. McCarthy said. It doesn’t get any easier when the cameras are running. The farm uses a smartphone, and the goats constantly nibble on its biodegradable carcass. “I think it’s a kind of herbal material,” she said.
Copyright © 2020 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All rights reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8