Pinzgauer  pronounced  pins•gow•er was first documented in the 1600’s. The designation "Pinzgauer" drives from the "Pinzgauer" district in the province of Salzburg, Austria. Herd books dated in the 1700's show that selective breeding had been going on for some time, and there are records of exportations of "Pinzgauer Cattle" to Rumania, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia in the 1820's.  In the early 1900's, a number of breeding cattle were exported to South Africa, which has the second largest herd of full blood animals in the world today.

Pinzgauer cattle are bred in the primary breeding area especially as a dual-purpose breed. In the future, these areas will shift the focus increasingly to the Pinzgauer cattle as beef cattle. The findings of a scientific study conducted by Prof. Franz Pirchner at the Technical University of Munich attest to the excellent quality of Pinzgauer beef.

Dr. Leonhard Gruber (BAL Gumpenstein - Research Institute for Agriculture in Alpine Regions) conducted experiments regarding basic-feed consumption efficiency, which shows that Pinzgauer cattle reveal very high rates of consumption efficiency. This characteristic makes for a major advantage as far as the use of our grassland areas is concerned. Organic farmers are also interested in higher levels of basic-feed consumption efficiency.

The Pinzgauer breed grew and spread during the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. Some of the breeding areas in the Slovak Republic and Romania date back to that time. Over time, there were additional exports to all parts of the world.

The first four head of Pinzgauer were imported into Canada in September 1972. Austrian Fullbloods were first imported to the USA in 1976. Live animals, frozen embryos, and semen all have been imported to establish fullblood herds and to upgrade the Purebred Pinzgauers. Pinzgauer as we know them today are the result of rigid performance and registry demands. The American Pinzgauer Association has a breeding-up program which allows a producer to breed up to Purebred Pinzgauer (7/8 for females, 15/16 for bulls) by starting with commercial cows and using Pinzgauer bulls. At the end of 1989, there were over 30,000 Fullblood and Purebred Pinzgauers in the United States, giving the cattlemen a world wide genetic base on which to build a Pinzgauer herd.