The Coastal Zone of Western Desert, Egypt (CZWD) is historically a pastoral zone, and the raising of livestock is the main socioeconomic activity. The zone has witnessed major changes over the last 50 years; demographic growth, urbanization, touristic development and agro-ecological diversification. More recently, the zone has faced a long drought period from 1995 to 2011, with low erratic rainfall (< 150 mm). Scarcity of rainfall has affected farming systems and household livelihood. The Bedouin societies have diversified their farming systems, based on livestock, barley and fruit trees. The study analyzes the impacts of this long drought period on the livestock farming systems, and the adaptive processes developed by breeders to cope with it. The analysis is based on household surveys (182 families surveyed between April and July 2011) in three agro-climatic regions of the CZWD: the rainfed region (West), the new reclaimed lands (East) and Siwa desert Oasis. The role of small ruminants differs accordingly to the agro-ecological region. In the dry rainfed region (West), flock size decreased from 244 to 152 heads, over the drought period from 1995 to 2011, where it is increase from 161 to 234 in the new reclaimed lands (East), with the availability of green fodder and crop residuals. The animal reproductive performance as lamb born/ewe/year differs with the agro-ecological region being better in the new reclaimed lands. In the rainfed region, breeders have developed different adaptive mechanisms such as, decreasing flock size, raising more goats, relying more on concentrate feeding and early marketing of their lambs/kids. Migration of family members to agro-pastoral and urban areas was another social coping mechanism to the long drought. Long drought duration have induced detectable diversification of farming activities in the area.