Animal husbandry is a component of almost all of the highly diverse production systems of the mountainous province of Bac Kan in northern Viet Nam. Some households only keep buffaloes for animal traction in lowland ricefields, whereas other households rely heavily upon income from cow and buffalo raising. Since decollectivization at the end of the 1980s, population in Bac Kan has grown substantially and the institutional and environmental contexts of agricultural production have changed dramatically, but animal husbandry systems have remained unchanged. Longstanding free-grazing practices are harmful to the natural resource base and engender conflicts among and within villages. This chapter describes an exhaustive study of 183 households in two villages in Ngoc Phai Commune that characterized household livestock strategies. The data from surveys on livestock practices were joined with a database on cropping systems and farm resource base. A typology was then developed, dividing farm households into ten types according to their crop-livestock strategies. The results are instructive in identifying household types as potential targets for organizational and technical innovations for improving croplivestock management. Innovations are proposed for systems in which animal husbandry activities complement crop production, rather than competing with it.