Egg Production Decrease
American Poultry Association · November 2021
This was a short reference note from Rip Stalvey about the normal decline in egg production as laying hens age. He presented the accompanying chart as a general guideline rather than an absolute rule and reminded readers that individual families of exhibition birds may hold production differently.
Use age expectations as a guide
The purpose of the piece was to help breeders interpret changing production over time. A decline in output with age can be normal, so year-to-year production should be considered in the context of the bird’s age rather than judged in isolation.
Exhibition strains can vary
Rip specifically noted that some exhibition families may not maintain laying performance as strongly as general production stock. That makes a breeder’s own records especially useful when evaluating how a particular family performs over several years.
Archive limitation
The original article referred readers to an external chart. The surviving indexed article preserves Rip’s explanation but not the chart values themselves, so Poultry Showcase does not invent or recreate those missing numbers.
The article text survives, but the original linked production chart is no longer preserved with the article copy we could verify. Poultry Showcase presents a detailed archive reconstruction in its own words while preserving the original author and publication attribution.
