Pastoralists mainly depend on three resources livestock, pasture and water and for this purpose they migrate and this is the only way for they can survive and sustain the ecological balance of nature. The pastoralists in Jammu and Kashmir still follow their traditional occupation of rearing animals and their condition has still remained unchanged. A study was conducted to find the adoption of improved small ruminant practices by the pastoralists of Jammu and Kashmir. The data was collected from 400 pastoralists belonging to Kathua, Jammu, Anantnag and Leh district of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh with the help of structured interview schedule containing selected dependent and independent variables, through personal interview technique. Majority of the pastoralists were middle aged, having poor education, engaged in caste occupation and were having marginal landholding and possessed medium herd size of 58 small animals. Further, most of the respondents had medium family size, with average of 6 family members. The social participation and mass media exposure of majority of the respondents were medium. They had poor extension contact. The income of the majority of respondents from livestock rearing was Rs.59290 per year and were having 31 years of average experience in livestock rearing. Pastoralists fared well in terms of economic motivation. However, majority had semi-nomadic pastoral system. The marketing system was rather limited. Nearly fifty percent of respondents (47.75%) were having medium adoption (46.60%) followed by low adoption (39.01%) of improved small ruminant practices by 32.25 percent of respondents. The respondents of the high adoption level (55.30%) constituted 20 percent of the total. Positive significant association between adoption and education, occupation, land holding, social participation, extension contact, mass media exposure, income from livestock rearing, and economic motivation was observed, while, negative significant association of adoption with pastoral and marketing system was observed.