As warm sun poured into the barn, baby goats wandered around, nibbling on people’s clothes and hair, jumping onto people’s backs and stomachs and gnawing on yoga mats as students in a yoga session moved from pose to pose on Sunday afternoon.

Students giggled as one baby goat leaped onto a student’s back and nibbled on her hair, which was up in a bun, and three goats climbed on top of another as she held a yoga pose. Students smiled and petted the goats as they did yoga, and after the class was over they scooped goats into their arms to hold them.

Baby goat yoga is a craze all over the country. Bowling Green yoga studio Be Happy Yoga and Salt Cave partnered with Buck Creek Stables in Smiths Grove in May to offer Be Happy Baby Goat Yoga.

Dee Daniels and her husband own Buck Creek Stables. She said 33 baby goats have been born at Buck Creek Stables since Aug. 30, and doing yoga with baby goats and other animals has benefits and “everybody loves baby goats.”

“When you read through the benefits that people have experienced when they go to the goat yoga sessions, it’s relaxation, it’s calming,” Daniels said.

Buck Creek Stables hosted another Be Happy Baby Goat Yoga class on Sept. 23, and it will host classes Oct. 7 and Oct. 8 at 10 a.m. and 12 p.m. both days.

Be Happy Yoga and Salt Cave manager Casey June Lloyd led the class on Sunday, and she said all instructors at Be Happy Yoga and Salt Cave who want to teach baby goat yoga at Buck Creek Stables get to teach at least one class.

Lloyd said she believes baby goat yoga is a good option for beginners because they get to try out different instructors and experience yoga without as much of its usual seriousness.

“Yoga can be so serious, so serious,” she said. “When you listen closely, your brain starts moving into things that maybe you haven’t thought about in a long time, but here, it just stays free and joyous, so it totally brings that into the practice and keeps it there.”

Lloyd said the baby goats affect the way she teaches yoga and the way her students experience yoga. During the class on Sunday, she encouraged her students to be curious like the baby goats.

“Watching little baby goats be so curious is just a reminder to stay curious in your movements,” she said. “Stay curious with your breath.”

During the class, she kept most of the poses in the session closer to the ground so students could be closer to the goats and so they would not frighten the goats, and she encouraged slow, gentle movements.

“I teach a slow breath, but when a student understands that if they don’t breathe and move slow, it will frighten a goat, it helps the idea of what I’m trying to do,” she said.

Debbie Montgomery, 39, lives in Rockfield and regularly takes classes at Be Happy Yoga and Salt Cave about two to three times a week. She started taking classes there about a year and a half ago.

Montgomery said she has a herniated disc, so her doctor suggested yoga to help with it, and she said yoga has helped.

She attended Be Happy Baby Goat Yoga at Buck Creek Stables on Sunday because her daughter’s birthday was the day before, and her daughter wanted to attend the class for her birthday.

Montgomery said she enjoyed doing yoga with the baby goats.

“I think them climbing on you kind of made you hold your pose better, made you focus on the pose.”

After the class ended, Montgomery sat cross-legged and held a brown baby goat in her lap.

“I’m going to have to take this little fella home with me,” she said.

Reporter Olivia Mohr can be reached at 270-745-6011 and [email protected].