Which charity it is makes a difference. Part of the Heifer deal is that they teach the people how to care for the animals, it’s not just giving them the animals and walking away. There is more to Heifer than that too. They are supposed to follow up. The animals are supposedly checked for disease before they are given. If it is a different charity, well I don’t know them or how they manage things.
I understand this is very difficult for a lot of people to accept but for thousands of years the model for chickens kept on a small farm is that the chickens fend for themselves in good weather. In the bad weather months they need supplemental food, but during the good weather months they can feed themselves if (“If” is a huge word here) if the forage is good quality. By good quality I mean different grasses and weeds, grass and weed seeds, various creepy crawlies, and decaying vegetable matter for them to scratch and hunt in. It helps quite a bit if there are larger farm animals so the chickens can hunt and find some really good nutrients in the poop. Many farm families have eaten a lot of eggs and met form chickens raised that way.
If the forage is right cattle, pigs, sheep, goats, turkeys, geese, many farm animals are quite capable of feeding themselves in good weather. In the winter months that changes. But many farm animals are pretty low maintenance and pretty inexpensive to keep in the good weather months.
You also have predator issues, keeping them off other people’s property and out of their gardens and crops issues, different things. This model doesn’t work for the vast majority of people on this forum, but in the right place it can work really well.
I would hope a lot of this is considered by that charity before they give an animal to anyone. It should be and supposedly Heifer does. But I don’t know about a different charity.
