[1][2][3][4][5][6][7] Heifer International distributes animals, along with agricultural and value-based training, to families in need around the world as a means of providing self-sufficiency.

[16][17][18][19][20] Its founder, an Indiana farmer named Dan West, was a Church of the Brethren relief worker during the Spanish Civil War.

[16][17] Heifer International would eventually broaden its scope to distribute fish, chickens, pigs, goats, sheep, cattle, oxen, water buffaloes, bees, llamas, alpacas, camels, frogs and rabbits to poor rural communities around the world.

[16] In the early 1970s, Heifer consolidated its U.S. distribution network by buying several large farms, including a 1,200-acre ranch in Perryville, Arkansas, as livestock holding facilities.

In 2008, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation awarded Heifer International a $42.5 million grant to help poor rural farmers in East Africa double their incomes by increasing their production of high quality raw milk to sell to dairies.

In 2011, Heifer International has committed to help rebuild rural communities and to improve economic opportunities through livestock inputs and management in Haiti as part of the 2011 Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) Annual Meeting.

[28] On May 7, 2022, Mark Middleton, a former special assistant to President Bill Clinton in the 1990s, was found dead at the Heifer Ranch in Perryville, Arkansas, approximately 30 miles from his home.

His death was ruled a suicide; authorities reported that he was found hanging from a tree with an extension cord around his neck and a shotgun wound to his chest.