Animals make corporate zoom calls bearable, if you don’t care about the pin

“It caught everyone off guard, especially Nate,” said Yujia Zhao, account manager at Benchling. The call erupted into laughter.

“They have a whole range on their spit,” Mr. Salpeter said. “It smelled heavily of hay.”

Repetitive virtual meetings over the past year have sapped morale in many workplaces. So companies hire four-legged guests – sheep, goats, turtles, llamas, bearded dragons and more – to paint smiles on the faces of jaded employees. Hosting animal video calls has become a lucrative source of income for many petting farms, sanctuaries, or zoos.

Animals don’t always play with them. The chickens squeal at the guests, the goats nibble their fingers, the cows gallop. Farmers have therefore become experts in pampering their talent. They found themselves shampooing fleeces, banishing troublemakers, blackmailing treats and scratching their bellies – all to keep the animals happy and performing.

“We’re bathing the hedgehogs which is really cute,” said Chelsea Phillips, founder of Tiny Tails to You. “We have baby shampoo which is good for them, but you also want to follow it up at the end with some olive oil spray because they can dry out quite easily.”

Tiny Tails, a virtual petting 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 of increasing income when the tours ceased last spring.

One of the most mischievous animals in Tiny Tails is Jeffrey the gecko, who, if held too close to the laptop during calls, jumps across the screen. “He’s a bit of a wild card,” Ms. Phillips said. Now they’re keeping two-year-old Jeffrey away so he’s not tempted to bomb the tech.

Stephanie Prevost, COO at Vendr Inc., which helps companies buy and renew software, took her three children for social work with Tiny Tails.

Things got chaotic when 13-year-old Knuckles Tortellini arrived. “It’s so silly, but the turtle at the end was pooping on the table, and the adults and kids were laughing so hard,” Ms. Prevost said. People still joke about it on Slack.

In response, Ms Phillips said they now feed animals well in advance to avoid unwanted accidents.

Alison Johnson of Bowbridge Alpacas Scotland in North East Fife, UK, is constantly in pursuit of her herd. An optician by training, Ms Johnson got her first alpacas in 2015. She charges £ 39 ($ 55) for a 30-minute visit and an adoption pack.

Balthazar, 6, a Huacaya alpaca with a windswept fringe, is the most mischievous member of the herd and has a tendency to influence others. On a call with Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co., he continued to walk away from the camera. Soon the alpacas were chasing each other in the paddock. Ms Johnson had to run to the end of the field to catch up with them.

“By the time she turned around, they were gone the other way,” said Kirsi Swinton, executive assistant at HPE.

“It keeps me fit and healthy,” Ms. Johnson said.

Mr. Saltpeter’s Sweet Farm has rescued over 150 animals, including pigs, turkeys, cows, chickens, sheep, horses and goats. Nowadays, a ten minute “Goat-2-Meeting” – a pun on LogMeIn Inc.’s GoToMeeting conferencing software – with unlimited guests costs $ 100, helping to raise funds for Sweet Farm and a collection. other animal sanctuaries. Sweet Farm made over 8,000 calls.

You can’t always rely on goats to behave either. Farmer Dot McCarthy used many of them from her herd of around 40 in Zoom to raise over £ 50,000 ($ 70,000) for her Cronkshaw Fold farm in Lancashire, England. The money enabled him to hire five new part-time employees. It is now considering investing in sustainable technologies such as solar panels and electric vehicles.

People can invite the goats on video calls – £ 5 for five minutes – and even create personalized food messages for the goats using edible paper and ink (£ 10).

Several times, the goats pushed her away and chewed the paper snack before joining the Zoom. “So if we’re ever late for a call that’s why, because we had to go rewrite the note,” Ms. McCarthy said. It doesn’t get any easier when the cameras are rolling. The farm uses a smartphone and the goats are constantly munching on its biodegradable case. “I think it’s kind of a plant-based material,” she says.