This paper is a thematic study for livestock production by smallholders and small-scale black commercial farmers in South Africa. Its aim is to identify the potential for successful expansion of the number of such farmers producing livestock through redistributive land reform, and to examine the possible outcomes of such expansion, with a particular focus on aggregate levels of production, famer income and employment. It forms part of a larger series of thematic studies carried out for the CBPEP/GTAC Project on Employment intensive land reform in South Africa.