Rendena

What do Rendena cattle look like?

A mid-sized, horned cow of the Italian Alps. The coat shades from chestnut to nearly black, and two markings help pick the breed out: a light muzzle and a dorsal stripe, the line of hair that runs down the spine. Bulls measure 125 to 130 cm at the withers, the ridge between the shoulder blades, and weigh 500 to 600 kg. Cows are shorter, at 118 to 120 cm, and lighter, at about 490 kg. This is a dual-purpose animal by build and by use: expected to give a steady flow of milk, to finish well as beef, and to cope with a summer of grazing in the mountains.

Where does the Rendena come from?

The breed was shaped in the Val Rendena and the neighbouring Giudicarie, in the Trentino, and takes its name from the valley. The first written trace of its making is the arrival of Swiss stock in 1712. From there the cattle spread across the Trentino and the Veneto, and as the 1800s closed they had grown past 200,000 head, making them the main dairy cow of the region. The new century went badly for them: both world wars thinned the herds, and official policy pushed farmers towards the Bruna Alpina instead. A law of 1942 barred Rendena bulls from breeding service, and before long only a few thousand animals were left.

What the Rendena is known for

What the breed is known for is its fit with the alpine summer. It is described as particularly well suited to transhumant keeping, the routine of walking the herd up to high pasture for the warm months and back down for winter. Cows at their first calf, grazing the high pastures for a hundred days or more, still average 4,733 kg of milk per lactation, at 3.50% fat and 3.36% protein. Milk like that from mountain grass, and meat of good quality from young stock, are what keepers value in it.

What the Rendena is kept for

Milk and meat share the work. Cows kept on a full ration all year round average over 6,000 kg of milk per lactation, the milking period between two calvings. The milk is cheese milk: cheese sold under the Razza Rendena name must come from Rendena milk alone, and Spressa delle Giudicarie, a DOP cheese of the Giudicarie, is made with it too. DOP is the European mark that ties a food to its home region. Calves are either taken for milk-fed veal or reared to 12 or 13 months, by which age they weigh 400 to 450 kg and yield 58 to 60% of good meat.

The land and climate of the Rendena

This is cattle country in the north-east of Italy, in the Trentino and the Veneto; most stock today is kept around Trento, Padova, Verona and Vicenza. The summer is spent at height. Almost the whole Trentino herd goes up to grazing on the mountains of the Val Rendena, while in the Veneto more than half the cattle spend the season on the Altopiano di Asiago, a high plateau. When the grazing year ends, the animals come down for winter.

Numbers, conservation and the herd book

The breed has had its own national association since 1976, the Associazione Nazionale Allevatori Bovini di Razza Rendena. A count taken in 2007 put the population at 6,986 head, all of it in Italy's north-east. The agriculture ministry in Rome, the Ministero delle Politiche Agricole Alimentari e Forestali, looks after sixteen smaller Italian breeds that are thinly spread; the Rendena does not appear on that roll, so its keeping rests with its own association and its keepers. The 2007 figure sits far below the 200,000-odd of around 1900, yet well above the few thousand left after the mid-century decline.

Questions people ask about Rendena

Good reading and sources

• Rendena on WikipediaEncyclopedia
• More photos on Wikimedia CommonsPhotos and video
• Wikidata recordOpen data