Alpine Animal Welfare: Perception and Treatment of Animals in Villages from Valais to Tyrol

The lives of humans and animals in the Middle Ages were far more intertwined than today in general, but this was especially pronounced in the Alps: Villages depended on alpine pastoralism (the Alpwirtschaft) for their livelihood and due to a lack of suitable waterways alpine transportation relied on the work of pack and draught animals. This paper will investigate the relationship between humans and animals in the Alps in the Late Middle Ages, based on sources from rural alpine communities from Valais to Tyrol. The paper will show that alpine villagers had not only a profound awareness of the needs of their animals but were also willing to go to great lengths to ensure their well-being: The first part of the paper is about how villagers dealt with challenges to animal health stemming from diseases and the environment, including sophisticated and effective measures to curb the spread of infections. The second part is a showcase for how people in the Alps treated animals as beings which deserved to be cared for: This included special rights for tired animals, a kind of maternity leave for pregnant draught horses and even a form of 'retirement homes' for old cows.