- September 13, 2024
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Kelly Harris, a former zookeeper for Busch Gardens and current guest host on Home Shopping Network, had no idea she would be going into business with goats when she rescued her first three in 2017.
“I just wanted my kids to grow up around animals,” she says, “I'd always loved goats, so I just started looking at pet goat breeds and this is what I landed on: Nigerian dwarfs.”
The Harris family — husband Jeff, son Hawk, daughter Ivy and two pups — purchased two acres zoned agricultural single-family in Lutz in 2015 with the intention of building out their brood. Two years later, Jeff sent her an American Farmer article about goat yoga as a joke. But as a goat owner who also enjoyed yoga, she was intrigued by the concept. She decided to launch Goat Yoga Tampa.
What started as classes in the backyard bounced into breweries and businesses looking for interesting new takes on corporate wellness activities. Real estate firms, hospitals, universities and even Dillard’s have all jumped at the chance to get a goat on their backs. Now the Harris herd, featuring goats Jeter, Brooks, Totes, Hoppy, Rudy and Boots and their human handlers — Kelly as the gal on the ground during class and Jeff as CEO, aka chief excrement officer — plus a certified yoga instructor, load up and roll out to almost 100 events annually. The operation brings in $60,000 in annual revenue.
In addition to the novelty of offering goat yoga exclusively, another distinction in their business model is the goats go on the road. “I don't really know that other goat yoga businesses across the country are even traveling to businesses. I don't want to say we're the only one because right at this point, there's a goat yoga in almost every major city, so it's possible that others are going to businesses,” Harris says, “But as far as I know, most of them have a space where they ask people to come.”
Joe Traina, co-founder and owner of In the Loop Brewing, which opened in Land O Lakes in 2016, was one of the earliest adopters after striking up a conversation with Jeff, who was grabbing a beer one day. “In the beginning we used to have a yoga class on the deck, but we just didn’t find it as well attended. The goats tend to be kind of a schtick draw, so to speak,” Traina says.
Ethan Hart, associate director of learning resources at St.Petersburg College, has been a client since 2018. “At the time, my librarian had gone to a goat yoga session at another company, and she's like, ‘wouldn't it be awesome if we could get goat yoga to come to our students?’ And we started looking around, and there were no mobile goat yoga businesses,” Hart says. “It was a hit, and we've brought them back pretty much every year since then.”
Hart even took a class alongside the students. “I wanted to be able to tell people that they don't hurt. When they jump on you, you need to be prepared and have a pretty good, strong table pose,” he says. “But other than that, they're just so sweet, and they love to be fed and loved and it's fun.”
Classes can be an hour or half an hour in length and cap out at 40 yogis, depending on the restrictions of the space. The sessions are $1,600 per hour and bookings don’t exceed three hours in length for the health of the goats.
“We never make any of our goats work. We use only positive reinforcement,” Harris says with a pouch full of animal crackers and peanuts nearby, “We let them decide if they want to come or not. If I have a goat that's kind of shirking me and doesn't want to come, I pick a buddy and I let them stay.”
Harris is intentional about her goat ownership. Many goat yoga businesses feature baby goats exclusively, which is only possible because the goats are eventually sold for meat once they age out and more babies are brought in. Additionally, many farms are only interested in female goats for the breeding and the milk, but the Harrises choose to own the ‘less desired’ male goats.
Running an animal-focused business has its challenges. Harris feeds her crew peanut hay, which started at $12 a bale and is now up to $22. Nine bales every quarter starts to add up, even with the supplemental grazing of grass and branches on the property. But she remains undeterred in her caretaking decisions. “I feed them premium food because they're my pets. I’m not breeding them; I'm not slaughtering them.They're with us forever.”
Harris notes that goat yoga is for ‘most people’. There are some naysayers in the ranks of yogis. “It will disturb your pose,” she contends. “So I think that maybe is offensive to their sensibilities, and that they were trying to do downward dog, and now they have a goat disturbing that pose.”
Ultimately the goal of the classes is to have fun. Harris advises, “If you're really wanting very strict, very thorough yoga practice [then] an indoor yoga class is probably what you're looking for. We don't get a lot of people that come just for the yoga. They're coming for both.”
There is, of course, the issue of poop. There is not much data on the frequency of bowel movements in adult goats, but Harris says her goats poop every fifteen minutes or so. With classes being a half hour to an hour, one can do the math on the odds of an unsavory encounter.
Because of their vegetarian diet, goat poop has the consistency of dry pellets. With the ‘chief excrement officer’ armed with a broom and a roving eye, Jeff Harris doesn’t miss a beat or a bleat when one of his charges defecates. Similarly, Lysol wipes and paper towels are at the ready should any liquid accidents occur. “For the most part, it's sort of a giggle moment,” Kelly says. “Most people are not offended by it.”
As of now, Harris is focused on enjoying scaling the business. She has plans to incorporate mobile shade shelters and fans so that classes are comfortable all year round, and will continue to work around her schedule as a guest host on HSN. The whole point is that everyone enjoys the process — not just the yogis but her, the goats and the family as well.
