This study investigates risk and time preferences of small-scale cattle farmers in West Africa and examines how demographic and socio-economic characteristics are related to these preferences. Using a maximum likelihood approach we jointly estimate risk and time preferences. Our findings show that, overall the West African cattle farmer shows poor performance in using probability information and is generally risk averse. The average cattle farmers’ time preferences indicate a higher degree of patience than expected. We also find that income, education, and religion are highly correlated with risk and time preferences.