Are Australorps the best layers?

Updated: 2 December 2022

If you're thinking about getting Australorps because you've heard they're great layers, please read on!

In my experience, bloodlines are far more important than the breed when it comes to egg-laying potential.

A lot of my clients stress that their purebred hens are not laying, or not laying as expected.

There are many possible reasons for this.

Sometimes it's simply because it's autumn (or fall) and they're moulting.

But some people expect eggs every day! This is not normal for any hen. Yes, commercial layers such as ISA Browns will lay up to 300 first-class eggs in their first year of lay. But if you've read "all Australorps lay 250-300 light brown eggs,"... it's just not true!

I’m not here to deter you from buying Australorps or pure breed chickens. Quite the opposite. But I will give you realistic expectations of how many eggs you're likely to get from your pullets and hens.

So, where has this information come from? Why are Australorps considered good layers? 

Let's go back in time.

Australian Egg Laying Competitions

Back in the days of Egg Laying Competitions - yes, that was a thing! Leghorns, Australorps, and Rhode Island Reds ruled the roost. 

Langshans, New Hampshire, Light Sussex, and Anconas were also up there, but not in massive numbers like these three breeds.

These were true utility fowls, bred for farm and backyard production. 

We’re talking well before the days of ISA Brown chickens and hybrids, television, and motor cars.

Many people bred poultry in big numbers, competing for the prestige that came with owning a fowl that got to compete in competitions such as the Burnley Egg Laying Competition. The competition was regulated by the Australian Agricultural Department and ran for 335 days each year. It was so popular that people entered a ballot just to be able to enter a bird or team of birds!

The above extract is from a newspaper dated 1954. After 244 days, the best layers in Victoria had laid 175 to 213 "first-class eggs.”

That’s 71.7% to 87.3% production! 

The leader (by one egg) was an Australorp! Keep in mind that they would have laid more than that, but only first-grade eggs were counted. 

However, these breeds - particularly Australorps - have come a long way since the end of Burnley Egg Laying Competitions in the 1950s. The Australorps of today may be prettier, but they are not the egg-laying machines that they once were.

Interpretations of the Australian Poultry Standards

So how and why have purebred Australorps changed over the last 60 years? Reasons include that the interpretation of the Australian Poultry Standards has naturally evolved and changed over the years.

What are the Australian Poultry Standards? 

The Standards are the criteria or expectations for which exhibition poultry breeders breed exhibition fowls (show chickens) for poultry shows.  

Poultry shows are different from egg-laying competitions. Birds are judged not on production but on their physical attributes and how aligned they are to the description of the breed outlined in the Australian Poultry Standards. 

If people are selectively breeding for shape or size and no longer breeding from their best layers, the bloodlines will naturally reflect this selection over time.

The Australian Poultry Standards is now a published book, collectively written over four years by the Victorian Poultry Fanciers Association (VPFA).  

Utility and exhibition Australorps

In Australia around the 1950's we had two distinct types of Australorps emerging:

• Utility, egg-laying machine Australorps, and 
• Their prettier, fluffier exhibition cousins. 

After the closure of Burnley in the 1950s, many poultry breeders gave up breeding the egg-laying Australorps. Instead, they focused their efforts on producing another breed, the white Leghorn. 

White Leghorns were typically a better layer and therefore commanded a higher price for backyards and egg farms.

Poultry breeders could also show these Leghorn fowls as utility and exhibition birds.

Alan Bradshaw (W. A. Bradshaw, mentioned in the article above) recalls, "The expectations for Australorps were changing every year, depending on the judge. I had a much better chance of winning with my white Leghorns. I entered the same white Leghorn cockerel in two Royal Shows in different states, one under the utility class, and the same bird in an exhibition class. It won both. I did it just to prove to the judges' panel that there should only be one class of white Leghorn: the utility white Leghorn. There is only one breed of fowl. And that's the [white] Leghorn!

Alan believes that many leghorns of today resemble the utility Leghorns (unlike Australorps) but that they would have to come a long way to bring back the epic egg-laying abilities that the majority had 60 years ago.