- You want it or not?
Quick.
Oh God.
Well, the now it's the sheep's cookie
Today, The Try Guys are having a little field
trip to The Gentle Barn.
Zack and Eugene aren't here,
so we brought along our families.
- Hey June, what are we doing today?
Today, we're here to hug cows.
- Grab your young ones and gather around.
We're gonna hug some cows.
(upbeat music playing)
We're meeting all sorts of animals today,
and all these animals are rescues.
So, every animal you'll see today is now
living a better life than they were because
of The Gentle Barn's hard work.
- Hi, I'm Ellie, and welcome to The Gentle Barn.
- Thank you so much for having us.
- Yeah.
- Excited to be here.
- Oh, look at his little snout.
- We have over a hundred animals.
They've all gone through incredible stories
of their own.
Come here to heal.
Forgive, forget, move on.
- Awe.
- Oh my gosh.
This is such dog behavior.
- When animals feel safe and loved and
seen, their personality really blossoms.
- They're very, very much like dogs.
Their tails are always wagging cause
they're happy.
And not only are they
affectionate with us, but they have incredible
relationships with each other.
- Come on everybody.
- Come on.
- Come on friends.
- Now outside of hugging the cows,
what are the things might we do today.
- For sure, cuddle the turkeys.
So, imagining that you probably have
never done that before.
- I've never done that.
- We'll definitely give some treats out to
the goats and sheep and llamas, and then
I was thinking that maybe you could help us feed
dinner.
- Oh man, it's a whole herd.
- The full farm experience.
- Right, I want to be like Paris Hilton in
"A Simple Life".
I want to be put to work on a farm.
Well, awesome.
Let's go hug some cows and get to work.
- Wow.
- So, you guys I'll introduce you.
This is Crystal.
That's Holy Cow.
That's Karma, she's our matriarch,
and that's Aretha.
- Aretha
The cow therapy is probably emotional, but
honestly I could use some physical therapy today.
- I've had dog therapy before, but never
with a cow.
I think that sounds nice.
- To mooove past some of the hardships in life.
- Hmm okay.
- Get in here, Ned.
- The thought of being very close to a cow is
a little stressful.
- Really?
- Yeah.
- You're not a huge animal.
Ned's not a huge animal person.
He likes to be like on the other side of
a fence from animals.
- Mhm.
- I'm hoping to overcome this personal trepidation
and to hug a cow.
So, what is cow hugging therapy?
- It's only the best thing in the whole world.
- Wow.
- Wow
- That's a big sell.
- So, for 22 years, we have been hugging cows.
It started with my very first cow.
I was going through the challenges of starting
a nonprofit and not knowing much about
it at the time, and at the end of
frustrating days, I would lean into her
shoulder and she would wrap her neck
around me and hold me.
- Awe.
- And I was like, whoa, everybody needs
to have this.
So, the best way to hug a cow you guys,
is just put your faces on them and close your
eyes and just take a minute to
be quiet and still and feel their energy.
- I'm very down for this.
- It's so good.
It's just so good.
And the best way really, is to crawl up
on their shoulders.
If you want to go on that side.
- Holy cow, I'm coming in.
- So, what sorta like physiological benefits
are happening when you're like, you know,
getting a hug.
- You know, there's something about being
in the energy of a cow that is so grounded
and centered.
- So chill, so calm, very nice.
- And it slows down our heart rate,
slows down our breathing.
It makes us kind of centered in present time.
It's a beautiful thing.
The other thing is like, if you think of a
newborn baby, we hold them on our shoulders,
right?
And so, they have their faces on us and
they feel really tiny and they feel really
cared for in our big bodies.
And, I think that putting our faces on a cow
and feeling small compared to their largeness,
it replicates that feeling.
- Wow
Wow.
That's a great way to think of it.
Both the two of them are like really in
meditation, and so that's when cuddling them
is the best because they kind of like just
exude all of this good energy.
- Oh, hi.
- One very exciting thing.
My parents are here.
My mom and dad, and my mom, you've maybe heard me
talk about before, shares a lot of animals that
need rescuing on Facebook, and she has actually
donated several times to The Gentle Barn.
When I told her we were going to some farm
to hug cows, she went, "Is it The Gentle Barn?"
- She knew exactly, immediately.
- That's how you know if you have a good
scratch spot, is they start licking.
- I love to get scratches too.
- It's kind of what you like.
- This is exactly what I like.
- Look at that.
- And, so, you know, my three-year-old,
he's excited, right?
But like he's maybe a little cautious, right?
Cause it's a new environment and cows might be
big compared to a three-year-old.
How do you kind of welcome someone in who's
maybe a little cautious around large animals.
- Yeah.
I love working with little kids who might
be cautious in the beginning.
A lot of times we think that if kids aren't
petting and interacting the way that we would,
that they're not really wiring in the experience.
- Go on June.
- Good job.
That was very brave to walk up to her.
But the truth is, that just watching and
listening and feeling is enough, and so to
acclimate someone like that, it's really just
about giving them space and letting them
know that they don't have to pet the animals
if they don't want to.
They can just watch.
- Oh, thank you.
Are you trying to feed the cow some bedding.
That was so nice.
Thank you.
- And by the end, you know, maybe they're more
comfortable and that's really cool.
The animals that you're going to be exposed to
today have no reason to be angry or sad or scared.
- A gentle place.
- A Gentle Barn.
There's something amazing going on over
there, too.
- Look at that.
- You guys got to get him too.
- It's nice to just hang out and paddock
out and not really worry about any of the
other things we might have on our
minds all the time.
Each one of these sort of came on their
own through different times.
And when a new cow, you know, arrives,
what sort of, you know, adjusting do they
have to have toward this environment?
- So, the first thing that we do when a
cow comes in is we put them through a
30-day quarantine to make sure that they're
healthy and to address any physical issues.
Some of them come in very, very sick.
Once they're deemed healthy,
then we have to heal them emotionally.
It's very seldom that we get a cow
that's trusting people.
Most of the time, they're really fearful.
So I mean, we couldn't touch her for a year.
- Wow.
- And so after a year she finally was like,
"Oh, I get it. You work for me. Okay.
scratch my back."
- Yeah.
- And she hasn't stopped bossing us around since.
- Hello, cow.
- Such a nice cow.
Beautiful cow.
So gentle.
Okay maybe not the best song.
Maybe he doesn't love that song.
This has been amazing, but let's go see some of
the other animals and hear about their stories.
All right, so Ned got a little overheated.
It is about 96 degrees today.
So, he took the boys home.
Aerial's still here with us.
- I'm very excited to be here.
I was not going home.
I was not going to miss this.
- These cookies are made out of oats and
molasses and the llamas love them.
I thought we could give the llama some cookies.
- Yeah.
- On the down low though, because if the
goats and the sheep and the pigs discover,
there's going to be a mob.
And I think we've been made.
- I think we've been noticed.
- Somebody is here.
I think I smell something and it smells
like you were talking about not feeding
me a cookie.
I don't know about that.
- This is our upper barnyard, where the pigs,
sheep, goats, chickens, turkeys, peacock,
llamas, and emu live.
- We have cookies.
- Hello.
- Hi.
- So, I think the first thing we need to
do is get rid of these cookies because
everybody's starting to smell them.
- Everybody wants the cookies.
- So, let's go up there to our llamas
and feed them.
- Do you want a cookie?
We're going to give them to you.
- Hello, beautiful.
- So, he can't grab them, so you have
to kind of like push it in his mouth.
- Shove it into his mouth.
- Here you go friend.
- You want to eat one of these?
You want to have one of these?
Have one of these.
Nom nom nom nom nom.
- Here you go.
- Is that good, my darling?
All gone.
Sorry.
You done?
Okay, another one.
It's nice.
Oh, okay.
- Not while you're eating, I understand.
I respect that.
Okay.
Everybody's getting cookies.
- Cookie, cookie, cookie.
That's it.
No more cookies.
Well, this is great, but I think I need a
turkey on my lap.
- So our cuddle turkey, her name is Sun, and
I'm going to sit you down in front of her and
she's just going to fall asleep in your lap.
- Hello.
Oh my God.
Look at this.
Hi.
You are so sweet.
What's your day been like?
This is a dream.
All the turkeys I've ever met in my life
have been wild, running around, screaming,
and this sweetie has a blanket sort of
jacket on and just walked over.
You know, I never thought I would call a turkey
cute, but this turkey is cute.
Yeah.
- She's talking to you.
You're so cute.
- She likes it.
- You're beautiful.
You're soft.
You're sweet.
- And do you guys see the pink bumps on
her head and neck?
- Yeah, what are those?
- That's her jewelry.
That's how she makes her self beautiful
to other turkeys.
- Girl.
- You are beautiful.
- Turkeys are one of the closest living
relatives to the dinosaur, and so if you
notice she has two eyelids, just like reptiles.
One that closes up to down and then another
that closes left to right.
- This is just lovely.
I could hang out, listen to some music,
sit here and just pet a turkey for a good hour.
So, now we are going to feed the pigs
their favorite snack, watermelon.
We've got both Try Wives here to smash
these melons.
I'm going to be here to try to smash
them into smaller pieces and spread them
out because apparently as soon as they smash,
pigs come running.
- One, two, three.
- Piglets!
- Pigs!
(upbeat music playing)
- That's good stuff.
- Oh, yeah.
- Yeah guys.
- Yeah.
- Wow.
- That's the biggest pig I've ever seen.
(upbeat music playing)
- The chickens are getting involved over there.
- So, we have finished feeding the pigs.
I got to sit with a little turkey.
Now, we've been doing a lot of stuff
that's honestly for us, so now I think we really
have to do something that's specifically
just for the animals.
Maybe brush some horses, maybe clean
up after some horses.
Let's go.
- Let's go.
- So this is Hiro, and the reason her name is
Hiro is because she has had one of the
worst stories that we've ever had in the
history of The Gentle Barn.
Several years ago, we were part of a very,
very massive cruelty case.
Over the course of four years, we not only
ended up with hundreds of animals from there,
but we were successful in shutting the guy
down and he went to jail.
When we got her, she was absolutely so damaged.
There was no muscle or fat on her.
You could see every bone in her body.
She had cancer in both her eyes.
We brought her to specialists, to different
hospitals, we drove her up north to UC Davis,
and unfortunately she lost the left one,
but we were able to save the right.
It took us about a year to get her to
where she is today, where her eyes aren't
hurting her anymore.
She's a beautiful weight.
Her coat is soft and shiny and she's happy, and
so I think she would love some extra attention.
Massage her and scratch her and groom her
that she would really love it.
The way that you know that you're hitting
a good spot is look what she's doing to my arm.
So, she's grooming me back.
Horses are very reciprocal.
So they actually, they often stand in big
grooming groups and they'll like groom each other.
So, you're grooming her, so she's including me.
- She's like yes, this is nice.
- Oh, yeah.
- She's literally in ecstasy right now.
I think the biggest lesson that the animals
at The Gentle Barn have taught me, is that no
matter what we look like, we're all the same.
and if we could just treat everyone,
whether they're animals or humans,
the way that we want to be treated,
this could be a much more peaceful and happy
place for all of us.
- That's very true, and how can maybe some
of our viewers help support your efforts?
- The best way to support us is to go to
our website, gentlebarn.org and to follow us
on The Gentle Barn social media.,
- Donate to this place because this place is dope.
I'm going to definitely donate as well.
- Thank you.
It's been a real pleasure to have you
guys here today.
- The pleasure is all ours.
This is so fun.
We're just having a little emu time.
You know, there's been an emu here the whole
time and we really haven't talked about it.
(intense music plays)
- Can we title the video, "The Try Guys Hug Giant
Boobs"
- No, we can't.
Technically it would be maybe more viral
for, you know, we used to go hug some cows.
- Thank you for vetoing that.
- Yeah.