brown tongue?

[Acre4Me]

Tween child was putting chickens up for the night. Noticed the 8month old Plymouth Rock had a pale comb, so checked it over and somehow noticed that the tongue was brown colored, so brought it to the house to show me the brown tongue. The bird is acting fine, as far as we can tell. While I would think the tongue is normally red (but not like we do normal tongue checks on the chickens), can this be a problem or normal?

In this pic, it kind of looks like the tongue might be farther back in the mouth, but I did see the tongue and it is dark brown looking. And comb is redder as tween carried the bird upside down part of the way to the house. It's harder to get a pic of a chicken tongue than one might imagine...

 

[sylviethecochin]

I've never seen it before. Any other symptoms? Do your other chickens have similar mouths? I'm thinking it might be something she ate, rather than a disease.

 

[Eggcessive]

It looks like her tongue is back in the throat. Sometimes they can get a hair or string around their tongues and swallow the string or hair, and the tongue gets pulled back. That can cause swelling of the tongue and can obstruct the airway. It doesn’t look like that at this time, but could she have swallowed a string off a feed sack? Or a hair? Here is the inside of a beak showing the tongue in place. Perhaps the bottom of the inside of the beak is normally brown? I don’t know the answer. @casportpony ,@Wyorp Rock, @dawg53 or anyone else, have you seen this?

 

[Acre4Me]

We will have to check some others in the morning. Good point about making sure that nothing is stuck to or wrapped around the tongue.

 

[ChickenJenn72]

We will have to check some others in the morning. Good point about making sure that nothing is stuck to or wrapped around the tongue.

Did you find out what was going on? How's your featherbaby doing?

 

[Acre4Me]

Did you find out what was going on? How's your featherbaby doing?

The Chicken was back to normal about 24 hours later! Tongue was back to normal color. Hate to think what the chicken had in it's mouth to make the tongue brown.

 

[chickens4pet]

My 3 chicks are 11 weeks old, and all 3 have brown tongues that look exactly like the picture above. One was sneezing often so I looked in her mouth. The second sounds like a goose. And the little cockerel has a runny nose. So clearly something respiratory is going on. But bacterial, fungal, or viral?

They haven't eaten anything besides crumble and grass/weeds/bugs. Not stained and doesn't rub off. Does anyone out there know what causes the brown tongue?