A Virginia farm is making international headlines after it began taking applicants for a unique new position: baby goat cuddler.
Yes, if you’re a good cuddler, love baby animals, and are willing to make the drive to southern Virginia, then the Caromont goat cheese farm would like to hear from you.
That’s because according to owner Gail Hobbs-Page, farm staff has been run ragged during “kidding season” with the arrival of newborn baby goats – more than 100 in the space of two weeks, Hobbs-Page told CBS News.
In addition to the necessities of their care, the newborn goats need to get used to being handled by humans for their future as milking goats.
Enter the “cuddlers.”
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“When they become milkers for the cheese operation, they’re easier to handle,” Hobbs-Page told CBS News. “If we didn’t do this on some level, you couldn’t get your hands on them. They’d just run away.”
So she posted a notice on Caromont Farm’s facebook page, asking if anyone would like to volunteer to help cuddle some baby goats. The volunteers were organized into four-hour cuddling shifts and some baby goats were even given little sweaters to up the cute factor.
She had no idea her original post would quickly go viral, with people applying from as far away as California and Australia. The farm says it has taken around 2,000 applications for “goat cuddler,” far more than it either anticipated or expected to handle.
“We had to rework some things in light of all of the traffic on our page,” a recent post on the Caromont Farm’s facebook page reads. “First of all, we would like to say thank you to all of the people who volunteered for our 2016 kidding season. Our schedule is full, and we even have back-ups for our back-ups!”
“We still plan on opening our farm in appreciation of volunteers that didn’t get a chance to sign up, but out of respect to our goats, our land, our neighbors (and zoning laws) we will need to limit the guest count,” the post continues.
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Hobbs-Page said the farm plans to continue and even expand the “goat cuddler” experiment in light of the overwhelming response.