A true bred, heritage type bird rarely lays as well as their hatchery counter parts. There is a pretty good reason for that. The hatchery fowl often are quite the posers. They look just close enough, or sort of close to the true bred birds that bear the name of the breed. The typical hatchery stock has had Leghorn or other blood hidden (and sometimes not so hidden) to make them better layers. The hatcheries are volume producers of flock bred birds. Think mill. It's what they do. They require high laying rates to be profitable.
In my estimation personality and temperament is a trait worthy of looking at closely. 95% of all complaints about the aggressiveness of RIRs is due to owners having hatchery stock. Most folks who keep old lines of quality, true bred Rhode Island Reds do not complain of the aggressive issues.
As for laying, the true bred bird can lay well. We have purebred, old type, heritage Barred Rocks that lay quite well. Our Reds also lay well. The thing is, they lay well for many years. Frankly, it was the egg bound and ovarian issues of the modern hybrid layer that drove us to re-examine what we wanted on our homestead. It's great that these top flight layers lay early, lay large, and lay heavy, but our experience is that far too many of them suffer the consequences at a very young age. We found it discouraging. A well bred bird will lay well enough for its keeper to be satisfied. 180-200 eggs per year. If you must have production levels of the commercial birds, you probably won't like the heritage fowl. Of course, a heritage fowl often is much heavier and provides a true dual purpose bird with meat on its bones, something that is pretty rare in a hatchery bird passing as the same breed.
