FSSAI CERTIFIED . LAB-VERIFIED ~90% A2 . NBAGR BADRI BREED . MAITOLI VILLAGE . BERINAG
Ghee from the Badri cow — Uttarakhand’s first registered native breed, giving milk that’s ~90% A2. Rare, hand-churned, and rooted in the Kumaon hills.
Badri cow ghee is ghee made from the milk of the Badri cow — Uttarakhand’s native Himalayan hill breed and the state’s first officially registered cattle breed (certified by ICAR-NBAGR in 2016). Badri milk is prized because it is naturally about 90% A2 beta-casein — one of the highest among Indian indigenous breeds. We set this milk into curd and hand-churn it the bilona way into pure, small-batch ghee.
The Badri is a small, hardy hill cow — around 200–250 kg — built for life on steep Himalayan slopes. Earlier simply called the “Pahadi Gai,” it was formally recognised as Uttarakhand’s first indigenous breed by the National Bureau of Animal Genetic Resources (NBAGR) in 2016. These cows free-graze on wild mountain grass, medicinal herbs and shrubs at high altitude — rarely stall-fed — and are notably disease-resistant thanks to that natural diet and clean air. That herb-rich forage is a big reason their milk, and the ghee from it, is so valued. More on India’s A2 breeds.
There’s a simple reason genuine Badri ghee costs more: the cows give very little milk — only about 1 to 3 litres a day, a fraction of what hybrid Jersey or Holstein cows produce. It takes a lot of this scarce milk to make a single kilo of ghee, and the hand-churned bilona method is slow on top of that. So Badri ghee can never be mass-produced — its price reflects real scarcity, not a markup. It’s also why some sellers pass ordinary ghee off as “Badri,” so genuine sourcing is the thing to verify.
Badri milk is naturally around 90% A2 beta-casein — among the highest of any Indian native breed — which is the whole reason people seek it out for A2 ghee. Because the cows graze on Himalayan herbs and shrubs rather than fixed fodder, their milk is traditionally regarded as carrying more of the mountain’s goodness, and Ayurveda has long valued native-cow ghee for daily use. We keep to what’s verifiable — the A2 percentage and the herb-grazing are real; the rest is tradition.
The Badri takes its name from the holy shrine of Badrinath, and in Uttarakhand’s hill communities the breed is considered auspicious — its milk and ghee are the ones traditionally offered in temples and rituals. It’s also an economic lifeline: Badri cows are low-input animals that landless and marginal hill farmers can keep, so a fair market for Badri ghee directly supports hill livelihoods and helps push back against palayan, the migration emptying these villages. Every jar carries a story bigger than the ghee — taste it in our A2 bilona ghee.
Pahadi Badri cows, grass-fed in Maitoli — hand-churned, lab-verified ghee.