The Goat Conspiracy Sanctuary has been a Bloomington favorite for their goat yoga classes and farm tours. The yoga is more focused on the goats rather than yoga, but is still beneficial for human wellbeing and the goats. One of the missions of the sanctuary is to open the minds of the community to see goats as animals that deserve respect, just like any other animal. Alex Valdez, the executive director, explains that goats are just like dogs: they love affection and need to be socialized.
Goat yoga is one way the sanctuary is socializing their goats, plus it gives the community an hour to bond with the goats and escape reality. Lead yoga instructor, Julie Ann Madewell, turned to yoga and animals for internal and physical healing. She wants to continue this for those who visit the sanctuary. Along with this, they offer sanctuary tours where patrons can explore the premise and learn more about their animals.
In the future, they hope to include the chickens more into their activities. However, Valdez explains how chickens are more difficult to socialize in comparison to goats. The main reason for this is because people are just generally more afraid or cautious around chickens. He says how they are fickle and picky with who they socialize with. Regardless, he says that you can train a chicken to do tricks such as flap their wings and make noises when prompted. To put the chickens into comparison to goats: chickens are more like cats, whereas goats are more like dogs.
Alex Valdez, Executive Director of The Goat Conspiracy Sanctuary, explains why the sanctuary made changes over the winter.
Over the winter the farm endured a few large changes and altered their mission. The farm is now a sanctuary where all of their farm animals, goats and chickens, are retired. The sanctuary used to be a dairy farm and would sell their products such as cheese and soap. However, the owners noticed many flaws and negative consequences of animal agriculture, so they decided to turn the farm into a non-profit. They also realized that no matter how hard they worked to make animal agriculture ethical, the problems occur at all levels of farming. Now with the farm being a sanctuary, the animals are only ambassadors for their species, one way they do this is through their activities like goat yoga.
The sanctuary does not exploit their animals, but they instead try to make them as comfortable as possible and give them unconditional love. However, Valdez says that running a goat sanctuary takes tons of time and effort. The previous farm manager was running the farm while trying to raise three children, and as some could imagine, this was a very difficult situation. This is another reason why the original owners decided to stray away from their original business plan and hire a new team of workers to take care of the sanctuary.
Valdez explains the danger animal agriculture poses to animals and how we can help improve this issue.
As said before, the dangers of animal agriculture happen on the smallest of farms to large production farms. Even with the farm’s efforts to be as ethical as possible, the issues stem from where they get the animals for production and the production itself. Exploiting animals can cause physical harm such as horn and beak removal as well as mental stressors during birth. Animal agriculture seems like a large issue to tackle, and truthfully it is. However, as Valdez says, there are small steps that we can take as consumers to help mend this issue.
The sanctuary identifies as “reducetarian” and has a large variety of viewpoints on their staff team. Some staff members are vegetarian, vegan, and reducetarian. Reducetarianism is when an individual tries to reduce the amount of meat they are eating and is mindful of where they are getting meat. Along with this, communities can support organizations like The Goat Conspiracy Sanctuary by attending goat yoga, tours, and volunteering. The sanctuary plans to continue their effort to reduce animal agriculture and inform our community of ethical practices.
