author(s)
Dr. A Rajadurai, Dr. K Rajamanickam and Dr. N Kumeravelu

abstract
Livestock have remained an integral part of the socio-economic fabric of rural people since time immemorial, not only as a source of livelihood but also as a provider of draught energy, manure and fuel. Livestock production is an important source of income for the rural poor in India. Hence we aimed to determine the socio-economic profile of the dairy farmers in Villupuram district of Tamil Nadu. The results showed that majority of the dairy farmers were women (59.5 per cent), middle aged (67.66 per cent) and literate (76.42 per cent), owning an average herd size of 4.01 numbers of cattle with Majority of the dairy farmers were small farmers (56.09 per cent) followed by Medium (26.08 per cent) and Landless (21.4 per cent). The primary and secondary occupations of the respondents were dairy farming with an average of 25.50 years of experience in dairy farming.