Animals make corporate zoom calls bearable if you don’t mind spitting

“He took all the people by surprise, especially Nate,” said Yujia Zhao, Benchling’s account executive. The call burst out laughing.

“They have great scope,” Salpeter said. “It smelled like hay.”

Repetitive virtual meetings over the past year have deteriorated morale in many workplaces. So companies hire four-legged guests — sheep, goats, turtles, llamas, bearded dragons, and more — to paint smiles on tired employees. Hosting video calls with animals has become a lucrative source of income for many farms, shrines or zoos.

Animals don’t always play together. The hens squeak on the guests, the goats gnaw their fingers and the cows gallop. So farmers have become experts at pampering their talent. They have been found making shampoos with old ones, banning those that cause problems, blackmailing them with sweets and scratching their bellies – anything to keep the animals happy and to have the best possible performance.

“We bathe the hedgehogs, which is really beautiful,” said Chelsea Phillips, founder of Tiny Tails to You. “We have baby shampoo, which you can use, but you also want to do it at the end with an olive oil spray because they can dry very easily.”

Tiny Tails, a pet-friendly 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 were stopped last spring.

One of Tiny Tails ’most mischievous animals is Jeffrey the Gecko, who, if he stays too close to the laptop during calls, jumps on the screen. “It’s a bit of a wildcard,” Mrs. Phillips said. Now, they keep two-year-old Jeffrey away so he doesn’t have the temptation to bombard technology.

Stephanie Prevost, chief operating officer of Vendr Inc., which helps companies buy and renew software, brought her three children to social work with Tiny Tails.

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

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

Alison Johnson, in Bowbridge Alpacas, Scotland, northeast of Fife, UK, is constantly chasing her herd. A trained optician, Mrs. Johnson got her first alpacas in 2015. She charges £ 39 ($ 55) for a 30-minute tour and an adoption package.

Six-year-old Balthazar, a Huacaya alpaca with a wind-swept strip, is the most mischievous member of the herd and tends to influence others. In a call with Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co., he continued to walk away from the camera. Soon, alpacas were being chased around the paddock. Mrs. Johnson had to run to the end of the field to catch them.

“When he turned around, they had wandered to the other side,” said Kirsi Swinton, HPE’s executive assistant.

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

Saltpeter’s Sweet Farm has more than 150 animals rescued from pigs, turkeys, cows, chickens, sheep, horses and goats. These days, a ten-minute Goat-2 meeting – a pun on LogMeIn Inc.’s GoToMeeting conferencing software – with unlimited guests costs $ 100, helping raise money for Sweet Farm and a collection of other animal sanctuaries. Sweet Farm has made over 8,000 calls.

Nor can you count on goats to behave. Farmer Dot McCarthy has used many of her herds 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 plans to invest in sustainable technology such as solar panels and electric vehicles.

People can invite goats to video calls (£ 5 for five minutes) and even create personalized messages for the goats to eat with edible paper and ink (£ 10).

Several times, the goats pulled him out of the way and chewed the paper snack before joining the Zoom. “So if we’re late for a call, that’s why we had to go rewrite the note,” Ms. McCarthy said. It’s not easier when the cameras are rolling. The farm uses a smartphone and the goats constantly gnaw on their biodegradable suitcase. “I think it’s kind of plant material,” he said.