What started as a joke has evolved into a serious money-making venture for a UK farmer.

According to BBC and FarmingUK, Dot McCarthy, who owns Cronkshaw Fold Farm, had a silly idea to let people hire her goats as participants for Zoom meetings.

The bizarre idea came up during a conversation about how COVID-19 restrictions in the country made her farm business, including interactive activities like “Goat Yoga” and educational visits impossible to be carried out.

The 32-year-old then came up with the idea of offering her goats as special guests during video calls to just brighten up the whole experience.

“This started as a joke. I came up with the idea, told my employee Emma, and we agreed it was completely wacky and we should prioritise other money-making ideas.

“I put it on the website that evening anyway along with Emma’s email address for bookings.

“When I woke up, I had loads of missed calls from Emma saying she’d been inundated with over 200 emails and couldn’t keep up with the demand for goat calls,” she said as quoted in FarmingUK.

Taking a chance on a mad idea

Seeing the feedback, McCarty couldn’t resist but give the idea a go.

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The result?

Since April last year, she made £50,000 (RM276,802) and has expanded her customer base to clients from the US, India, China, Russia, and even Australia.

Wow!

She added that the amount of money she currently earns via the zoom calls meant that she no longer had to rely on selling manure to make ends meet.

What's the moral of the story?