Are my Chickens too fat?

[bsruther]

Seems like every time we lose a Chicken, the rest of them get a little bigger.

 

[Aacre]

They are soo cute! They look great to me. How is egg production? If they were too fat, they wouldn't be laying eggs very well at all. I always think that animals (and people) are always better to be on the chubby side. Hey! If they get sick, they won't be stick thin right away!

 

[KageChick]

I agree, if chickens get too fat their egg production is impeded by the layers of extra fat because it blocks their passing the egg through (this is what my Mom says). I have three different breeds and I noticed that each one has very different sizes and we can expect that some will be heavier birds at their maturity. Your birds look happy and beautiful, I hope they stay healthy! What happened to the ones you lost?

 

[bsruther]

Their laying is fine. They all started production back up about 3 weeks ago and have been pretty regular. They're 4 years old and this is the first time they've gone all winter without laying. Right now, it's siesta time and their crops are fully expanded from a plate of lard from frying chicken last night. The lard was mixed with a lot of other scraps.
They just look really fat to us. The last one that died broke her neck jumping off the roost and I figured it was from how fat she was.