Tyrolean chicken

The Tyrolean chicken belonged to the feather crested chicken ("Spitzhauben") popular for centuries in the central and eastern Alps and most probably related to the widespread Polverara chicken south of the Alps in northeastern Italy. The "Spitzhauben" have been bred in Salzburg monasteries already in the 15th Century.

In an extensive publication (Festschrift) in honor of the fifty-year anniversary of the enthronement of Emperor Franz Joseph I in 1898 the Tyrolean chicken is mentioned as a breed recently achieving high prices in exhibitions. In 1902, the Tyrolean breed is then subject in the House of the Austrian Empire Council. During the deliberations on the Ministry of Agriculture, it is mentioned as a good example of high hardness, weather and disease resistance, which should be placed on the increased use of poultry.

Detail of oil painting "Rural Idyll" by Januarius Zick (ca. 1775), painter in southern Germany