Brogna Sheep

The Brogna is a native sheep breed reared for centuries in the Lessinia pastures, at altitudes ranging from 1,000 up to 1,800 meters above sea level. This pristine environment is in part protected by the Monti Lessini regional park. Sheep have been farmed here since Neolithic times, but it was in the 4th century, with the arrival of the Cimbri, settlers of Bavarian-Tyrolean origin, that the mountains began to be deforested and herding developed significantly. Between the 14th and the 15th century woolen cloth from Verona was exported as far as northern Europe and competed with wool from Flanders and England. Traces of this past remain in Verona’s architecture, like the "Capitello dell’Agnello," the column of the lamb, which holds up a statue of a sheep (whose appearance is very similar to the Brogna), the symbol of the Arte della Lana, the guild of wool manufacturers, or the Sgarzarie loggia, a portico where woolen cloth was sold. From the 16th century on, however, the wool market was undermined by silk production.
Another surviving reminder of this past are the pastures and, in increasingly scant numbers, the local Brogna sheep. The breed risked extinction a few years ago, but a handful of farmers undertook to save it.
Also known as Badiota, Prognola or Nostrana, depending on the valley, the Brogna sheep is medium in size, with slender legs and a slimmer, better-proportioned body compared to more productive breeds. The head, with a convex profile, is marked with darker patches that tend to be reddish in color. The ears can also be dappled and point obliquely downwards.
The breed is characterized by a fleece-free belly, which like the legs and face is tawny or chestnut in color in both the rams and the ewes. The rams tend not to have horns. The breed has a triple purpose, and is raised for its delicate meat, its milk and its wool, which is pliable and has a very soft fiber, producing much thinner yarn than the wool from more common local breeds.
In the 1980s, the University of Padua began the task of mapping the entire Lessinia area, with the aim of selecting the animals that presented the characteristics of the Brogna breed, later codified in the official register. Currently there are around 2,500 brood ewes. The sheep are raised on pasture, in flocks of less than 100 animals, and feed on the wild plants of the Alta Lessinia meadows, one of the few parts of Italy recognized as a historical rural landscape.
One farmer still practices transhumance, the seasonal migration of livestock; from March to November the flock rotates around the richest highland pastures, then returns to the low-lying plains and foothills during the winter.

Season

Lamb is found in the period leading up to Easter.