About: http://data.cimple.eu/news-article/8e4b739c27f2f144415ebb5113cb3f2224906ab7a04f1f064ef01a07     Goto   Sponge   NotDistinct   Permalink

An Entity of Type : schema:NewsArticle, within Data Space : data.cimple.eu associated with source document(s)

AttributesValues
rdf:type
schema:articleBody
  • A British farmer came up with a jokey idea to rent out her goats to liven up video call meetings -- and found an unexpected source of lockdown income. The floppy-eared goats glance curiously as farmer Dot McCarthy holds up a mobile phone to film them eating hay and prancing around in a barn. The video of the goats appears on a Zoom call as three other participants smile and McCarthy tells them the goats' names. Meanwhile, a farm employee is filming another goat in a simultaneous call. Cronkshaw Fold Farm in Lancashire, northwestern England, offers a five-minute appearance by a goat on any video-calling platform for £5 (nearly $7, 6 euros). Customers have their choice of seven different goats on the farm's website, from "highest-ranking nanny" Margaret to cute brown-and-white kid Lulu. "Say you're doing a video call with work or whatever, or maybe a really long family call and it's getting a bit boring," McCarthy says. "You can book a goat to join you in the meeting and just see if any of your colleagues notice." And business is thriving, the 32-year-old farmer says. "This started as a joke -- putting goats on video calls to prank people in their work routines -- and it's just gone a bit crackers, really." Since it started offering the service nearly a year ago, the farm has earned £50,000 pounds, "which is crazy", she adds. The small family farm also has sheep and chickens. Before Covid hit, it had diversified with various side businesses such as conducting farm tours and sheepdog demonstrations, providing guest rooms and even goat yoga. But when the first lockdown hit, McCarthy faced letting go two part-time staff she had recently hired. The popularity of the goats on Zoom has allowed them to keep their jobs and also provide additional work for the local community, important in a rural area, she says. At the same time she is not giddy over the success of what she calls the "goat video call wave". "I've been saying this since the first lockdown, but I definitely think this is just a phase," she says, laughing. "But yeah, we'll keep going -- as long as people want goats, we will bring goats to the people." video-am/phz/gd
schema:headline
  • No kidding: video calls with goats boost British farm
schema:mentions
schema:author
schema:datePublished
http://data.cimple...sPoliticalLeaning
http://data.cimple...logy#hasSentiment
http://data.cimple...readability_score
http://data.cimple...tology#hasEmotion
Faceted Search & Find service v1.16.115 as of Oct 09 2023


Alternative Linked Data Documents: ODE     Content Formats:   [cxml] [csv]     RDF   [text] [turtle] [ld+json] [rdf+json] [rdf+xml]     ODATA   [atom+xml] [odata+json]     Microdata   [microdata+json] [html]    About   
This material is Open Knowledge   W3C Semantic Web Technology [RDF Data] Valid XHTML + RDFa
OpenLink Virtuoso version 07.20.3238 as of Jul 16 2024, on Linux (x86_64-pc-linux-musl), Single-Server Edition (126 GB total memory, 3 GB memory in use)
Data on this page belongs to its respective rights holders.
Virtuoso Faceted Browser Copyright © 2009-2025 OpenLink Software