Photo by Jake Lyell for Heifer International.

I hope you’ve enjoyed our Holiday Giving 2011 series, where we’ve taken a look at many of the livestock and other agricultural inputs Heifer uses as part of our projects worldwide. I thought it might be nice to do a bit of a re-cap, in case you missed one or are just discovering the series.

A goat is the poor man’s cow.
A heifer provides all 7 Ms: Milk, Manure, Muscle, Meat, Materials, Money and Motivation.
Sheep were domesticated nearly 12,000 years ago.
Llamas and alpacas are better pack animals than horses.
Chickens, geese and ducks provide hundreds of eggs a year.
Trees make a great gift for vegetarians.
Water buffalo are like tractors that poop.
Pigs are a farm’s living savings account.
Rabbits are the gifts that truly multiply.
Camels are in it for the long haul.

All of these options, and more, are available in our online Gift Catalog. It’s always the right time to give the gift of a better life to families and communities in need. But the holidays really do give us a good excuse, don’t they?