We found that evaluating corticosterone in skeletal muscle may be useful when evaluating adrenal function in hens because under both acute and chronic stress the dynamics of change in skeletal muscle reflected that of the plasma. This finding is consistent with similar work in rodents and humans where the tissue concentration of cortisol has been shown to be very informative when evaluating adrenal function [10],[12], [13], [15] and [25]. In these studies, microdialysis was used to measure corticosterone in tissue. Our data extend this understanding to laying hens and suggest that microdialysis may be a valuable tool to evaluate stress in hens. Conversely, we observed that the plasma concentration of corticosterone did not predict changes to corticosterone in hen liver, kidney, or cardiac muscle. This was most apparent in the liver.