How a ‘mind-bendingly daft’ Goats on Zoom service made a Manc farm famous
Cronkshaw Fold Farm started hiring out goats to Zoom meetings back in April 2020 as a joke. But the service has now raised thousands and kept staff in work.
Zoom meetings have become part and parcel of everyday life during the pandemic.
In lieu of face-to-face contact, millions have turned to video conferencing platforms to host virtual meet-ups – with Joe Public, MPs and even Royal Family members communicating via video link.
But Zoom sessions – regardless of whether they’re for work meetings or social catchups – tend to follow a predictable pattern.
At least one person is impatiently urged to take themselves off mute. Other participants verbally bump into one another at deafening volume. And some bits of the conversation are permanently lost in a garbled, pixelated, blurry vortex.
Sometimes there’s a quiz, too.
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It’s the same thing day in, day out. So it’s no wonder, then, that one farm’s attempts to change the Zoom status quo have gone down so well.
Cronkshaw Fold in Rossendale – around 40 minutes north of Manchester city centre – is home to sheep, chickens and dogs, but it’s their resident goats who have catapulted the farm into the news headlines.
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The farm has been hiring out their goats for Zoom meetings right around the UK – offering some refreshing comic relief from video conferencing cliches in the process.
Cronkshaw Fold Farm
It all started back in April 2020.
Farmer Dot McCarthy decided to pop a message on the website that confirmed Cronkshaw Fold’s goats would be happy to get involved in any video calls moving ahead.
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If anyone wanted to invite a goat onto their next Zoom call, they could pay £5 and staff would make it happen.
But Dot didn’t actually expect people to get in touch.
“It was a joke!” she tells The Manc.
“Bored mates stuck doing home-working had shared stories about the mundanity of video calls so I said they should add a goat and see what their boss does.
“And now, yeah, it’s got a bit out of hand!”
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It definitely has – but in the best possible way.
Cronkshaw Fold’s goats have proven so camera-friendly that they’ve netted the farm over £50,000 – a vital lifeline at a time when doors have been shut to visitors.
The first two members of staff were hired just before the pandemic began, and whilst things looked bleak initially, the Goat Zoom service has successfully kept the duo in work.
Any extra money beyond the payroll will be put towards making the farm more eco-friendly – switching to renewable energy, electric vehicles and greener farming practices for the lowest carbon food production.
Almost one year on from launching, Zoom Goats is still a wild success – with people from all walks of life requesting the company of these furry farm animals for all kinds of reasons; from family breakfasts to butting in on marketing meetings.
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“The pranksters are the best!” says Dot.
“Anyone sneaking a goat in without any pre-explanation. The confusion and mild panic – ‘Is it a troll? No it’s a goat!’ – that ensues is hilarious.
“We’ve had all sorts; stag dos, toddler birthdays, family catch-ups – Gran and Grandad’s reactions are golden.
“We’ve even had meetings where there’s so many people the goat can go unseen… until it bleats in the middle of a speaker’s presentation.”
Anyone hoping to get themselves an interrupting goat can also take their pick from the different personalities on the farm – with a webpage packed with info dedicated to each individual animal.
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“Obviously this service is completely ridiculous, but that’s kind of the point,” says Dot.
“It’s funny because it is so mind-bendingly daft.”
Cronkshaw Fold has also grabbed headlines for running other innovative services involving its animals since lockdown – including virtual farm tours and bee adoption services.
Staff have also run Goat Yoga sessions in the past – where participants can “snuggle some goats at a safe distance from other humans”.
Naturally, with the current rules in place, this service is paused right now. But the farm is looking at potentially bringing back the exercise classes when restrictions are loosened a little later in the year.
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For now at least, Cronkshaw Fold Farm is focused on connecting people with animals via camera.
They’ve introduced bleating to meetings. And it’s tickled Britain pink.
Learn more about Cronkshaw Fold Farm’s Goats on Zoom service on their website.
Feature
Taemin at AO Arena: Take the K-pop world’s ‘Advice’ – you need to watch him live
Thomas Melia
This time last month, South Korean star, SHINee and SuperM boyband member, Taemin showed Manchester the real meaning of ‘The Rizzness’. It was our first K-pop gig and won’t be our last.
Normally, if you ask me what I’m getting up to on a Tuesday night, I’d respond with the usual: “Nothing.” Ask me this random but eye-opening night back in March 2025, and I’d say, “Watching the ‘Ephemeral Glaze’ tour”.
Opening with a song labelled ‘Déjà vu’, ironically, felt from the truth, as the minute the performer stepped onto the stage, the whole crowd was watching what felt like an all-new spectacle come to life – even for some of the already inducted K-pop fans inside the AO Arena.
Following up with ‘Guilty’, I’d be lying if I told you we didn’t love this performance. It wasn’t overshadowed by that unbelievable grand opening either – if anything, it was even better.
A majestic pose from Taemin at AO Arena in Manchester, performing to a lively crowd.Credit: Audio North
This was a setlist that just keeps on giving: after this, ‘Advice’ greets our ears and fans erupt in various screams and cries, to which Taemin, 31, certainly appreciated.
It’s high energy through and through, as the next song, ‘Idea’, felt like the missing piece of the jigsaw puzzle for those of us not so used to this kind of music, well and truly captivating the Manc crowd.
Closing what was merely his opening segment with this song was definitely a good ‘Idea’… (sorry).
Its title may draw from a comedic viral term used to describe someone with great flirting skills, a.k.a. ‘rizz’, but ‘The Rizzness’ is no laughing matter.
Fans caught on quickly, and as soon as the first note was pumped out into the arena, the atmosphere reached whole new heights and those familiar screams at an other-worldly pitch returned.
I never thought I’d see the day where AO Arena screamed, “You know I got the rizz, the rizzness”, but there’s a first time for everything, I guess.
Taemin and his dancers were electric at AO Arena.Credit: The Manc Group
Being from Korea, 31-year-old Taemin tried his best to communicate with the crowd throughout the night, taking breaks after back-to-back performances to gauge the audience’s reactions.
The South Korean superstar didn’t take long to warm up to the crowd and showed off his cheeky side, telling the arena, “Only 4 more songs” before finishing the sentence with “I lied”.
‘Criminal’ had me and the rest of Manchester weak in the knees; the choreography was flawless throughout, but this was a true highlight. Ending with ‘Say Less’, Taemin knew exactly what he was doing, putting a song that catchy right at the end, as this was all that replayed in my head on the train home.
Put it this way, we may still be relative newbies to the world of Korean pop music, but with another big name heading to Manchester, we’re definitely keen to find out more.
The best Manchester-based anime-style memes we’ve seen online as Ghibli craze takes over
Danny Jones
Now, the internet can be used for a lot of silly and pointless things – you might argue us sharing our favourite memes every morning is a prime example of that – but we have to admit, the second we saw a Manchester-inspired Studio Ghibli image on social media, we were hooked.
If you have absolutely no idea what we’re talking about, there is a current craze that has taken over the internet, which has seen recognisable memes and images recreated in the style of the iconic Ghibli anime films, created by legendary animator and filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki.
Once you’ve found one, you tend to start spotting them more and more frequently, and in the case of the chronically online like us, we’ve been inundated with them for weeks now.
People are using AIto create them in various different contexts, but it won’t surprise you to learn that our favourite Ghibli/anime memes are those based around Manchester. For example:
Bloody hell, the internet really is brilliant sometimes, isn't it? 😂 https://t.co/virpFx60u7
As it happens, this was the first and perhaps still the best we’ve seen to date, but it didn’t stop us from falling down an animated rabbit hole looking for others.
To be honest, we didn’t actually have to do much searching ourselves as they’re absolutely all over the algorithm at the minute, and have been for a good month or so.
‘Ghibli memes’ may be an overgeneralisation of what is a rather specific and famed art style, but this ongoing flood of anime-style cartooons is being created by users giving prompts to ChatGPT, the increasingly popular large language model (LLM) and AI tool.
Designed with OpenAI software, the artificial intelligence chatbot can do everything from write extensive study notes and flash cards to fixing blurry images, writing computer code, entire essays and quite literally countless other things.
In this instance, people are just reimagining moments from the zeitgeist and famous memes in this style by feeding the image to ChatGPT, along with an ‘in the style of Studio Ghibli’ prompt.
One for the Blues…And the Reds.All of these images have been designed using ChatGPT. (Credit: Eleventh Minute/centredevils via X)
Pretty cool, right?
You’ll find that footballer Twitter (sorry, X*), in particular, is absolutely full of fan accounts recreating iconic club scenes in the Miyazaki art style, giving their favourite players big ‘Chibi’ eyes (another unique aspect of anime) and so on.
It’s all just a bit of a laugh, after all; even we here at The Manc put ChatGPT to the test back in June 2023 and asked it to design ‘the perfect day out in Manchester’ – to varying degrees of success, we might add.
As ever with machine-learning, the more information you feed it, the better the result and although we know these are original pictures being reimagined, it still goes to show just how impressive and varied AI is becoming.
We’ve also enjoyed some that aren’t necessarily Manc but are quintessential British humour or simply more universal memes.
Exhibits E and F…
Even after all these years, we feel like we still see this in some context at least once a week – and it still makes us laugh.‘What a sad little life, Jane…’Credit: brandsynario (via Instagram)/No Context Brits (via X)
Despite these memes riding a real wave right now, the Ghibli portrait fad is just that; there are plenty of other aesthetics being toyed with, too.
Actually, it already has, as we’ve now started coming across people making action figure versions of themselves and/or famous people, full decked out with accessories inside blister packs and everything.
On the other hand, many people are understandably concerned about what this means for artists and although there is no substitute for genuine human expression, whatever form that may come in, lots of people are railing against it as the possibility of AI-based pop music has been posited.
With that in mind, maybe the best twist we’ve seen is our very own Stanley Chow subverting the trend and doing Ghibli stuff in his equally iconic style. We’ll take these geometric gems over computer-generated imitations any day.
For now, it’s just a bit of fun and we confess we’ve got some light entertainment out of it, but the increasing possibilities being thrown up by AI in terms of art do pose a lot more complex questions.
We’ll finish with one final example because let’s be honest, there’s only really one thing on our minds at the minute – at least until the summer finally rolls around…
Let us know if you’ve seen any other fun examples and what you make of the whole Ghibli meme trend down in the comments.