Between the XVII and the XIX century, the breeding of the cow-buffalos was diffused firmly in a great many of the south zones of the peninsula. While before milk had been worked and transformed in cheese in the same place where the milking took place, from 1600, it was worked in the "bufalare":  buildings in masonry of a circular shape, with a central chimney which allowed whether to heat milk for the curdling, or to provide hot water for the modelling of the forms.

Of this period, we can find records regarding the slaughter of buffaloes, of their price, confirming the use of the cow-buffalo meat in that period; generally, their meat wasn't much appreciated, because the animals were slaughtered in advanced age, and therefore their meat resulted very hard and it had a marked taste of musk. The hide of the buffalo, instead, had been sold well in Constantinople and on the coasts of North Africa, where important tannery rose.

At the beginning of the XIX century the breeding of the buffalos was tied still to systems of primitive breeding; in fact it used a half-wild system which required investments, expenses and risks reduced to the minimum, giving birth to a real fortune for the marshy regions which could not have found another form of exploitation and therefore of income.

The different productions of milk, hide and meat were used differently in the peninsula, where the breeding was practiced; in the South of the areas of Caserta and of Salerno, the buffalos were bred exclusively for milk production, transformed then subsequently in cheese; in the zones of Toscana, meat and hide production were the most in demand.

In the XX century, with the advancing of the work of reclamation, the breeding of the buffalos contracted, but its half-wild and primitive characteristics were not modified.
The reclamation of Agro Pontino, of Low Valley of Sele, of Volturno and of other zones of Italy in the pre-war period, and the agrarian reform of the second post-war period contracted the area of breeding of the cow-buffalos to a few zones of Campania, of Lazio and of Puglia.

In this period, the breeding had a decisive turning-point of renewal, changing from a traditional half-wild and travelling form, to another one compatible with the new territorial order.

The experimentation accomplished in the first post-war period, and subsequently in the 40s, showed that the transformation of the breeding of cow-buffalos was possible without excessive difficulty and without the need of the animals to bathe in summer, provided they had been sheltered from the solar radiations and from the punctures of the bugs; these experimentation were possible thanks to the intuition of Maymone, before in Salerno and then to the experimental Institute of the zoo-techniques in Rome.

So, the modern breeding of the cow-buffalos began asserting and bettering; today, techniques and machineries more and more modern make of it a sector in the van and ready to new challenges and horizons.