Tag Archives: Goats

CEO Pierre Ferrari to Visit Haiti

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Heifer President and CEO Pierre Ferrari leaves for Haiti tomorrow to attend the opening of a new goat breeding center. Ferrari will be in Haiti from February 15-22 to preview Heifer Haiti’s new Rural Entrepreneurs for Agricultural Cooperation (REACH) Project. The $18.7 million project will target more than 20,000 families in Haiti, working with goats, cattle, poultry, pigs and other agricultural inputs. The project will focus on moving families from hunger to self-sufficiency and further into small business development.

The new goat breeding center will house about 100 animals, which will be used to fortify local goat sock. The center, administered by the farmers’ association Tet Kole, was built as part of Heifer’s umbrella project for earthquake recovery. In addition to producing animals, it will help train farmers in animal husbandry, business development and management. The center opening on February 16 is a model for other breeding centers that will be created under REACH.

The REACH project will create 150 goat- and pig-breeding centers to increase the supply of quality animals in specific regions of Haiti. At least on-third of the centers will be run by women (or women’s associations), as part of Heifer’s commitment to the empowerment of all small farmers, especially women.

In addition to inaugurating the new breeding center, Ferrari will visit projects, meet with government officials and other international organizations. He will be accompanied by Oscar Castaneda, vice president of Heifer’s Americas Program.

Heifer Launches New Project in Nepal

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There’s some exciting news coming from Nepal. Tomorrow, Friday, Heifer will formally launch a new $23.8 million project there, helping families band together to emerge from hunger and poverty.


Thuli Maya Lama, 45, of Juretthhum, Nepal.
This project will work in 28 districts to build up goat and dairy enterprises over the course of five years. Demand for these products is high in Nepal, but the country depends on imports to satisfy the need. By strengthening local production, Heifer hopes to reduce the number of goats being imported into Nepalby about 30 percent by the year 2016, and reduce milk imports by 10 percent.

This is an expansion of Heifer’s work helping thousands of Nepalese people move from vulnerability to self-reliance. The project aims to teach families how to produce more meat and milk by managing their animals more carefully. Then, Heifer plans to help participants forge trade alliances. By forming community groups and cooperatives, farmers can better connect with buyers.

The Nepal project will employ Heifer’s unique holistic training system to empower its participants for the long term. In addition to learning how to properly care for their animals, participants will be educated in areas like money management, gender equality, literacy, community collaboration and entrepreneurship.

With that foundation, small-scale farmers can not only feed their ownfamilies, but also work together to find larger markets for more dairy products.

Heifer International has worked in Nepal since 1977 to reduce poverty and build sustainable family enterprises with animals like sheep, goats, ducks and water buffalo. Now Heifer is confident that in areas of Nepal with dire poverty, its new goat and dairy project can create transformative and lasting change.

Give a Goat: It’s the Poor Man’s Cow

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Goats are versatile animals and are at home in a number of environments. Heifer uses goats in projects from Albania to India to Uganda. In addition to being one of Heifer International’s most popular gift animals, goats are an amazing resource to families.


Photo by Jake Lyell
After childhood illnesses left both Monica Mulongoti and her husband Jackson blind, the couple and their children lived for many years at the Fisenge Blind Center near Luanshya, Zambia. There was only enough food for one meal a day. But then Monica received dairy goats through a project Heifer had begun at the center. Monica now earns $5.38 per day from the sale of the goat milk, and the money affords the family three meals a day. “Heifer goes to those who are really needy, the really poor. They give animals that help us get food for our children,” said Monica.

Preserved Pastures
Grazing animals can damage vegetation and soil. Heifer project recipients are taught zero-grazing: a technique where animals are kept in adequate enclosures and fodder is brought to them. This technique preserves pastures and leads to higher milk outputs and better manure for organic gardening.
Dairy
Goats can have two to three kids a year. More goats means more milk, and more people worldwide drink goat’s milk than cow’s milk. Goat’s milk is easily digestible because of the smaller milk fats. Goat’s milk can also be turned into cheese and yogurt for family consumption and sale.
Education
The sale of extra milk or the money earned from renting a buck to others in the community for breeding can dramatically increase income for a poor family. For many, this enables them to send their children to school, an almost guaranteed way to break the cycle of poverty.
This holiday season, consider giving the gift of a goat in honor of Uncle Steve, whose laugh sounds more like a bleat. And read Heifer CEO Pierre Ferrari’s 18 Ways Goats Change Lives.

Know Your Animals: A Heifer Livestock Primer

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The López-Durán family of Bolivia with their sheep.
Photo by Christian DeVries

As the holiday season approaches, you might find yourself debating which Heifer gift will be the best for Aunt Franny or the Boss. Well stress no more! Over the next few weeks, I’ll dive into the wide spectrum of livestock and other agricultural items we put to use in our projects all over the world. Look forward to learning more about:

Goats
Heifers
Sheep
Llamas
Chicks, ducks and geese
Tree seedlings
Honeybees
Water buffalo
Pigs
Rabbits
Camels

Weekend Article Roundup: Did You Know?

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We shared this picture of Edward, 4, feeding the family goats
at his home in Uganda. This picture is just too special not to
share again with everyone else.
(P.S. ‘Like’ our Facebook page if you haven’t already.)
One of the best parts about working at Heifer International is the fact that you continue to keep learning. Everyday, I read a new article, hear a new statistis, or read something a colleague has written and learn something I didn’t know the day before. 

Sheep Mow Your Lawn; Goats Eat Your Weeds

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Would you pay $2 a day to let a pair of sheep mow your lawn? If you live in Oberlin, Ohio, you now have the option! With the economy what it is, folks are getting realllly creative to earn their livelihoods, even here in the United States. This NY Times article highlights an urban sheep shepherd who rents out his sheep as a lawn care service, another man you can pay to build a backyard chicken coop and teach you to care for your very own poultry, and several other cases where people are turning to creative urban agriculture.

Goats are pretty handy, too. Though they won’t actually eat tin cans, they will eat kudzu, otherwise known as “the weed that ate the South.” In Knoxville, Tennessee, these browsing ruminants have been put to work eating kudzu on farms and along highways since at least 2003.

Heifer Can Teach You to Be Nicer

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In China’s Sichuan Province, Training in Heifer’s 12 Cornerstones for Just and Sustainable Development led to one woman’s transformation into a more peaceful and collaborative person.

Huang Yu, 47, is a mother to two children. She was born in a poor, remote village in Nanjiang County. The oldest of many children in her family, Huang didn’t have an opportunity to go to school until she was 10. Three years later, she dropped out in order to take care of her younger sisters and brothers. The circumstances of her upbringing made Huang very strong and stubborn.


At 20, Huang married a young man she had never met. In a new environment with unfamiliar routines, she became withdrawn and quick-tempered. She didn’t like to talk to others and was seen as proud. She had numerous quarrels and even fights with her neighbors, and it wasn’t long before Huang became the least welcome person in the whole village.


When Heifer International conducted several trainings in her village on the 12 Cornerstones, especially Gender and Family Focus and Full Participation, Huang learned many new concepts she had never considered before. Looking back on her life journey, she realized that having such a strong personality, combined with a lack of education, directly resulted in her family’s low income and miscommunication with others in the village.

Heifer China didn’t bypass Huang because of her personality or poor family. Instead, they considered her the perfect person to engage with and invited her family to be original project participants. Through Heifer’s trainings and Self-Help Group (SHG) activities, Huang gradually changed. She visited other SHG families, contributed to participatory discussions, and attended every meeting and training. Huang has become a totally new woman: passionate, peaceful and willing to help others.

Huang passed on the gift as she promised after two years. She now has 30 goats and earns $787 a year. Heifer not only taught her how to make more income for her family, but also made it possible for them to improve their living conditions with a new, wooden building.

At a Passing on the Gift® ceremony, Huang shared with others how Heifer International and project partners helped her change her narrow values and habits and improve her animal-rearing techniques. “Money alone cannot buy me respect or make me a generous and kind woman,” Huang said. “Heifer changed my values and my entire life.”

Happy Birthday, Heifer Ranch

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This past Saturday we celebrated the 40th anniversary of Heifer Ranch.

A Brief History of Heifer Ranch

Abu, a 5-year-old male camel, was presented to
Heifer Ranch as a birthday gift from Overlook Farm
in Rutland, Massachusetts.

Heifer International dates back to 1944, with an inaugural shipment of 17 pregnant heifers to Puerto Rico. In 1971, Heifer was offered 1,100 acres near Perryville, Arkansas, to raise and house animals being shipped overseas to those in need. The model of shipping animals fromt he United States, however, turned out to be very costly and inefficient and was later discontinued in favor of purchasing livestock from within the project countries. Through the years, Heifer Ranch has evolved into an education and research center, a model farm and ranch, a conference center and a volunteer experience. The farm is now home to water buffalo, camels, pigs and goats, as well as gardens that help feed volunteers and the public. School groups, youth groups, families and individuals have come to the Ranch to experience what it really means to live in a poverty-stricken village with scarce resources. Visitors are introduced to Heifer’s sustainable solutions and learn more about what they can do to help.

The Celebration
Friday night held a Homecoming Tour and Reception for Past Ranchers (staff and volunteers). Three of the past Ranch directors were on hand to help celebrate. It was great to see old friends, but hard to see how the landscape has changed since the tornado this spring.

Jacob Sheatsley leads a drum circle in the Global Village

Saturday was an all-day party. There were crafts and activities for the kids, demonstrations along the Global Village trail, a picnic lunch, hayride tours, birthday cake and a special gift from Overlook Farm, one of Heifer’s other Learning Centers. Visitors had the opportunity to meet some of Heifer’s country directors, who have been in town for meetings.



My Brief History at Heifer Ranch
Heifer Ranch is how I first came to know and love Heifer International. I participated in the Global Village program (now called Global Gateway) when I was 14 years old. Growing up in Little Rock and attending college in Conway, Arkansas, I went to the Ranch several more times as a participant before deciding to become a volunteer. During college summers and after graduating, I spent a total of about 12 months as a live-in volunteer. I became impassioned with Heifer’s mission of ending hunger and poverty and caring for the Earth as I led field trips, facilitated group team-building activities, milked goats, taught cheese classes and became a part of the Ranch community. I met my husband and a great many of my friends at Heifer Ranch.

A volunteer shows how farming on terraced slopes
 helps prevent erosion

Heifer Ranch holds a special place in my heart, so I was excited to take my daughter to Perryville this past weekend to join in the celebrations. She loved the animals, of course. Petting the pigs, lambs and goats in the showbarn was certainly a highlight. But it’s Abu the camel she’ll go on talking about. And the cupcakes and candy (she is a kid, after all). I’m so glad my daughter will grow up learning about Heifer’s work in the world and knowing that she has a place in making the world a better place for everyone to live. And I’m thankful we have Heifer Ranch just down the road where her learning will be hands-on and exciting, not to mention a piece of her family’s history.

Heifer in Haiti: Rabbit Addition

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Enithe Luxius gives proper credit to her rabbit Jaqomy.

Image byGeoff Oliver Bugbee
Story by Katya Cengel
Enithe Luxius pulls out a smallnotebook inside of which she has charted a family tree. There is Mr. Sedye andGermaine and their descendants Osnel, Rony and Osny. On another page is Jakoband Jacqomy and their seven descendants.
The four rabbits HeiferInternational supplied Enithe on May 12 have already multiplied to 17.
Enithe was surprised by howquickly the rabbits reproduced.
“Any time we finish a cage for oneof them we have to build another house because we know it’s going to multiply,”she said through a translator.
That is a good thing, because themore rabbits Enithe has the more money she can make by selling them. Enithe’shusband works in construction in France, while she lives with their 12-year-oldson, Richardson Tinius, in a valley in the Saint Louis du Sud region of Haiti.It is a beautiful area surrounded by mountains and crossed by rivers, but whenit rains it floods and the crops and animals are destroyed.
Last time it flooded Enithe lostsix goats. Six months ago Heifer International partnered with a localorganization to deliver 400 rabbits to 100 families in the area. Because therabbits reproduce rapidly and can be kept in cages high off the ground, thegroups felt they would provide a feasible economic opportunity for thecommunity.
Enithe seems to agree and isexcited about raising more rabbits and maybe one day saving enough money tomove to an area less prone to flooding. Of course one rabbit she won’t beselling is the prolific Jacqomy.