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Greater Victoria farm swamped with goat cuddling offers

The wee goats need to get used to humans before ‘goat yoga’ launches

Everybody wants to cuddle goats.

A Greater Victoria area lavender farm has closed applications after being swamped with more than 5,540 emails offering to help cuddle their baby goats.

Starting yesterday afternoon, people aged 16 and older were offered the opportunity to cuddle goats for half-hour timeslots to help the goats get used to humans.

In a few weeks, once they’re aquainted and comfortable, the Nigerian dwarf goats will be part of “goat yoga” on the farm.

Victoria Lavender owner Alan Mayfield said in a September 2017 interview that he started raising the Nigerian dwarf goats about five years ago “just because they were cute.”

READ MORE: Goat yoga in North Saanich a first

He had a stroke in November 2016 and was looking for a way to sustain his business if he did not fully recover. A friend showed him a video of goat yoga on an Oregon farm and said to Mayfield, “You could do this.” So he did, and he was bowled over by the demand.

Last year, he said nearly 5,000 people applied to be volunteer goat cuddlers, and 1,200 went on to the farm to do yoga.

If you are not among the lucky few cuddlers, you can still view them from outside the paddock on weekends from 10-4 p.m.

Classes will be held every Saturday and Sunday at 9.30 a.m. and 4.30 p.m. starting Saturday April 28th until Sunday September 2nd.

For information, email info@victorialavender.com info@victorialavender.com.

Watch: Goat yoga, it’s really what you think it is.

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Alan Mayfield of North Saanich’s Victoria Lavender, holds one of the steadily-growing goats that was a participant in a goat yoga program that had more than 1,200 participants (Hugo Wong/News staff)