I recently had two 1-year old hens die suddenly. Both were freedom rangers (a little experiment to see how these meat birds would do as egg layers). I did a necropsy on the second one that died and found a few things that were clearly wrong (yellow fluid in body cavity and a partially calcified egg free floating in the body cavity). I wasn't too surprised by this because two other freedom rangers had also died in the preceding months and a necropsy on one revealed a blocked oviduct. My question is about the amount of body fat I found in this hen - I'm wondering if the amount of body fat shown in this picture is normal or excessive. The layer of fat around the outer edge of the body cavity shown in the picture below is 1/2 to 3/4 inch thick. It seemed excessive to me, but this is my first venture with laying hens so I don't know what is normal...
