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Laticauda sheep

Slow Food Presidium · PAT · Meats and cured meats · Campania

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In brief

History and origin

The name comes from Latin: lata cauda, broad tail. It is the first thing you notice about this sheep, a wide, fatty tail that acts as a store of fat and water, built up when pastures are plentiful and used in lean times to feed the lambs.

The breed comes from crosses between the local Apennine sheep and a North African sheep, the Berber or Barbary, brought to Campania by the Bourbons in the time of Charles III. At first it was raised mainly around Naples; it then moved towards Capua and from there to the areas of Ariano and Benevento. By the end of the fourteenth century, the Region notes, laticauda pecorino cheeses were already famous in the villages of the Fortore near Benevento.

After coming close to extinction, the breed was successfully recovered in the early 1990s. Today it is a Slow Food Presidium and its meat is listed among the traditional products of Campania.

Sources: Fondazione Slow Food — Presidio Pecora laticauda · Regione Campania, Assessorato Agricoltura — Carne ovina di Laticauda (prodotto tradizionale) · Regione Campania, Assessorato Agricoltura — Pecorino di Laticauda (prodotto tradizionale) · Masaf — Elenco nazionale dei prodotti agroalimentari tradizionali, XXVI revisione (2026)

Area and method of production

The laticauda has an all-white fleece that leaves the belly bare, and long, thin legs: it is not a good walker. For this reason it did not take part in transhumance, which was left to other breeds such as the bagnolese, and was kept near the farms of the middle hills, in small flocks of a few dozen head that provided cheese for the family and lambs.

Today it is raised mainly in the provinces of Avellino and Benevento, with some flocks around Caserta. The Presidium brings together farms that keep purebred animals and follow tradition: semi-free-range rearing, lambs left with their mothers, and grazing supplemented with sainfoin and alfalfa hay, oat and barley straw, and cereal and broad bean meal.

The aim is to promote laticauda meat and cheeses and to counter the many products on the market that use the name without the right to it.

Sources: Fondazione Slow Food — Presidio Pecora laticauda · Regione Campania, Assessorato Agricoltura — Carne ovina di Laticauda (prodotto tradizionale)

How to recognise it

The lamb is the breed's most prized product. It has a high carcass yield and tasty meat, free of the typical smell of sheep. Because fat collects in the tail, the rest of the body has less of it: the Campania Region describes leaner meat, appreciated only recently, after the laticauda had long been kept mainly for its milk.

The milk, produced in good quantity, is rich in fat and protein and gives sweet cheeses, buttery when fresh and also suited to ageing. The pecorino is sold fresh after two days, semi-aged after two months or aged for four to twelve months, when it becomes hard, straw-coloured, intensely fragrant and slightly spicy. The whey gives a light, delicate ricotta.

The meat is available from December to April, the cheeses from January to October.

Sources: Fondazione Slow Food — Presidio Pecora laticauda · Regione Campania, Assessorato Agricoltura — Carne ovina di Laticauda (prodotto tradizionale) · Regione Campania, Assessorato Agricoltura — Pecorino di Laticauda (prodotto tradizionale) · Regione Campania, Assessorato Agricoltura — Ricotta di Laticauda (prodotto tradizionale)

In the kitchen

The dish linked to the laticauda is ammugliatielli, rolls made with the fifth quarter, the offal usually discarded at slaughter. The name, with variants such as mugliatieddu, glummarieddi or migliatielli, comes from a word meaning ball of yarn: it recalls their shape and the gesture used to wrap them, like winding wool.

They are made with the offal of milk-fed lamb, carefully washed and left for a few hours in water with citrus peel; part becomes the filling, with cheese, sweetbreads, parsley and garlic, and the rest is used to close the roll around a wooden skewer. They are eaten mostly roasted, in the inland areas of Campania and especially in the Campania-Lucania Apennines.

The lamb is also excellent in the simplest preparations, roasted in the oven or over embers.

Sources: Fondazione Slow Food — Presidio Pecora laticauda · Regione Campania, Assessorato Agricoltura — Ammugliatielli (prodotto tradizionale)

Where to taste it

The laticauda is found in the inland hills of Campania, in the provinces of Avellino and Benevento. The Presidium's farms include some in the Ariano Irpino area and at Castelvetere in Val Fortore, in the Fortore district near Benevento, where pecorino from this breed has been most renowned for centuries.

The best time to taste the lamb runs from December to April, while the cheeses are available from January to October. A trip through Irpinia, between Avellino, Taurasi and the villages of Upper Irpinia such as Villamaina, crosses the same land of hill pastures where this sheep has returned to life.

Sources: Fondazione Slow Food — Presidio Pecora laticauda · Regione Campania, Assessorato Agricoltura — Pecorino di Laticauda (prodotto tradizionale)

Protection

When

Where

Campania