Animal welfare
Room to move, clean bedding, water always available, routines that respect the animals. A calm buffalo is a healthy buffalo.
[PLACEHOLDER: animal-welfare certifications, e.g. ClassyFarm]
Our buffalo · Milk quality: Quality starts in the barn
Good cheese can't be made from just any milk. So we keep a close eye on what really matters: the animals, how they live, how they are milked and what happens to the milk in the hours that follow.
- ~500Mediterranean buffalo
- 1 : 1One record per animal
- 2001Raising buffalo since
The herd
Around 500 Mediterranean buffalo
The Italian Mediterranean buffalo is a breed apart: hardy, long-lived and at home in the southern climate. Its milk is what mozzarella is made from, and nothing else will do.
Our herd numbers around 500 animals, raised on our own farm in Agropoli. We know them one by one — not as a figure of speech, but because our systems let us follow each animal individually, every single day.
Milking & traceability
One buffalo, one record
We milk with DeLaval systems and manage the herd with DelPro software. Each animal is identified at every milking and her data is logged — so traceability runs from the individual buffalo to the milk in the tank.
- Yield — litres per animal, milking after milking.
- Health — any change from an animal's normal pattern is flagged straight away, so we can act early.
- Reproduction — calving, lactation and dry periods, animal by animal.
- Traceability — from the individual buffalo to the milk in the tank.
Every day
Welfare, hygiene, cold chain, testing
Good milk is the sum of small things done every day, without exception.
Hygiene
The milking parlour and equipment are washed and sanitised to a fixed procedure after every milking.
Cold chain
Straight after milking, the milk is chilled and held in refrigerated tanks — powered largely by our own solar plant.
Milk testing
[PLACEHOLDER: milk checks and analysis — frequency, laboratory, parameters tested]
Our herd is registered in the control system of the Mozzarella di Bufala Campana PDO. [PLACEHOLDER: other milk checks and analysis]
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What our buffalo eat
Barley sprouted on the farm every day and forage from our own fields: feed is the other half of quality.