It's a real life Chicken Run.

Austrian firefighters spent hours on Tuesday morning collecting escaped chickens after a truck transporting them hit a bridge and sent the birds cascading across the road.

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Pictures from the scene showed chickens freed from containers wandering around the road as firefighters attempted to round them all up.

St Florian's fire brigade said that they were called to the scene around 5am but took a long time to get to the scene as traffic stopped by the chickens had backed up far down the highway.

Once they realised the extent of the situation, further local brigades had to be called to join in the effort.

Authorities said around 120 people in all helped to clear the chickens off the highway by catching the live birds and returning them to the undamaged containers. A number of the chickens sadly perished in the accident, the driver was uninjured.

Fire services said that in all, it took them four hours to catch the escaped poulty and clean up the road before traffic was able to freely move again.