The increasing number of challenges faced by small ruminant farms underlines the relevance of studying their capacity to cope with such challenges, i.e. their resilience. Grounded on farmers' perceptions, the aim of this research is to identify the challenges threating the small ruminants farms and the attributes that make them resilient. The study is focused on the case study of the small ruminant farming system in Spain. A mixed-methods approach, combining quantitative and qualitative analysis is followed, based on structured and semi-structured interviews. The results show that the small ruminants farms are generally threatened by institutional challenges in the long term (e.g. policies, bureaucracy and control mechanisms). There are also farm-type-specific challenges such as the increasing input and energy prices, labour conflicts and sick leaves in the short term; and stable/falling production prices, high level of investment, low attractiveness of the sector, lack of labour and succession in the long term. The attributes that commonly foster the resilience of the small ruminant farms are the autonomy, functional diversity, knowledge and innovation, and economic and human capital. Finally, there are resilience attributes that are farm-type-specific, such as the infrastructure capital, being coupled with local and natural capital and the spatial and temporal heterogeneity. Therefore, when designing resilience-enabling policies, the diversity of small ruminant farms and the challenges they face, as well as the combination of common and farm-type-specific resilience attributes should be considered.