Previous studies have shown that inducing a molt using feed removal exacerbated an intestinal infection by Salmonella enteritidis (SE). The current study was conducted to determine whether inducing a molt using a molt diet would still cause a pause in egg laying but not exacerbate an intestinal SE infection. In Experiments 1 and 2, hens were either provided ad libitum access to layer feed (control), fed 45 g molt diet (molt-feed) daily, or deprived of feed for 14 d (molted), and were orally infected with 1 × 107 SE on Day 4 of molt. Egg lay ceased in hens subjected to both molt treatments. The percentage of hens shedding SE did not differ among treatment groups in Experiment 1, whereas in Experiment 2 the molted hens had significantly higher shed rates than the controls on Days 10, 17, and 24 postinfection and the molt-feed hens on Days 17 and 24 postinfection. Compared with both fed groups of hens, the molted hens shed significantly more SE in Experiment 1 on Day 10 postinfection, and in Experiment 2 the molted hens shed significantly more SE on all 4 sampling days. In Experiment 3, subgroups of hens within each treatment group received serial 10-fold dilutions of SE and intestinal shedding of the organism in each subgroup was determined 7 d later. The 50% infectious dose (ID50) was calculated for each treatment group from these shedding results. The ID50 was 2.7 × 103 SE, 5.2 × 102 SE, and 1.3 SE for control, molt-feed, and molted hens, respectively, indicating that feed removal substantially increased the susceptibility of hens to an SE infection and the molt diet decreased this susceptibility. Little difference was observed in the pH of alimentary samples or of cecal contents from hens in each treatment group, indicating that increased severity of SE infection was not due to alterations of intestinal pH. Histologically, the molted hens exhibited more extensive inflammation of the intestinal tract at Day 4 postinfection compared with the unmolted group. Intestinal inflammation in the molt-feed hens was intermediate between the two. These results indicated that molt induction, using a molt diet, will not put hens at risk for the severe intestinal infection observed in birds subjected to feed removal.