PGI Penedès Rooster

With firm flesh and darker color than usual, the Penedès rooster is bred in complete freedom for eleven weeks, with a natural diet rich in grain, which enhances the flavor of its meat. It belongs to the black and improved Penedès breed and includes chickens, bonnets and pulardes. Chicks are black with a ventral area, wing tips and face white. Once adults, the plumage is completely black, and only the plants remain white. The first attempts to define the breed of roosters from the Penedès occurred in the 1920s. In 1921, after a poultry competition of the Commonwealth of Catalonia, it was determined that the pattern of the breed was a greenish black color, with metallic reflections on the tail, that the chickens had to be flattered and that the color of the eggshell should be reddish. Later, in 1946, it was approved that the Penedès breed be represented by a single variety, the Vilafranquina Negra. In the following years, competition from other breeds brought the Vilafranquina breed to a critical situation and it was not until the 1980s that the Institute of Agrifood Research and Technology began a recovery program.