Animals make business zoom conversations bearable, if you don’t mind spit

“Everyone was taken by surprise, especially Nate,” said Yujia Zhao, Account Manager at Benchling. The phone call broke out in laughter.

“They have quite a range on their spit,” said Mr. Salpeter. “Most of it smelled like hay.”

Repeated virtual meetings over the past year have undermined morale in many workplaces. That’s why companies are hiring four-legged guests – sheep, goats, turtles, llamas, bearded dragons and more – to paint smiles on the faces of jaded workers. Hosting video calls with animals has become a lucrative income stream for many farms, sanctuaries or petting zoos.

The animals do not always participate. Chickens screech over guests, goats nibble their fingers, cows gallop away. Farmers have thus become experts in pampering their talent. They’ve found themselves washing fleeces, banning troublemakers, blackmailing sweets and belly crabs – all to keep the animals happy and performing at their best.

“We give the hedgehogs a bath, which is really cute,” said Chelsea Phillips, founder of Tiny Tails to You. “We have baby shampoos, which are fine to use, but you want to follow that up with an olive oil spray at the end too because they 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 vying for attention – with hangouts starting at $ 65. It was one way to boost revenues back then the visits stopped last spring.

One of Tiny Tails’ more mischievous animals is Jeffrey the gecko, who jumps on the screen if held too close to the laptop during conversations. “He’s a bit of a wild card,” Mrs. Phillips said. Now they are keeping two-year-old Jeffrey away so he isn’t tempted to bomb the tech.

Stephanie Prevost, Operations Director at Vendr Inc., which helps companies buy and innovate software, took her three children for a social work session with Tiny Tails.

Things got chaotic when turtle Knuckles Tortellini, 13, showed up. “This is so crazy, but the turtle at the end was pooping on the table, and the adults and the kids were laughing so hard,” said Ms. Prevost. People still joke about it on Slack.

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

Alison Johnson of Bowbridge Alpacas Scotland in North-East Fife, UK, is constantly chasing after her herd. Ms. Johnson, a trained optician, 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 windy fringe, is the most mischievous member of the herd and tends to influence the others. During a phone call with Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. he kept wandering away from the camera. Soon the alpacas were chasing each other around the paddock. Mrs. Johnson had to run to the end of the field to catch them.

“By the time she turned, they had wandered to the other side,” said Kirsi Swinton, an executive assistant at HPE.

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

Mr. Saltpeter’s Sweet Farm has more than 150 rescued animals, including pigs, turkeys, cows, chickens, sheep, horses and goats. Today, a 10-minute “Goat-2-Meeting” takes – a play on words on LogMeIn Inc.’s GoToMeeting conference software. – with unlimited guests $ 100, which helps raise money for Sweet Farm and a collection of other animal shelters. Sweet Farm has made more than 8,000 telephone calls.

Goats cannot always be expected to behave. Farmer Dot McCarthy has used much of her roughly 40-strong herd in Zoom calls to raise more than £ 50,000 ($ 70,000) for her Cronkshaw Fold Farm in Lancashire, England. The money allowed her to hire five new part-time employees. Now she 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 using edible paper and ink (£ 10).

Several times the goats pushed her out of the way and chewed on the paper snack before joining the Zoom. “So if we ever get late for a phone call, that’s why, because we had to rewrite the note,” said Ms. McCarthy. It doesn’t get any easier when the cameras are running. The farm uses a smartphone and the goats are constantly nibbling on the biodegradable casing. “I think it’s some kind of plant material,” she said.