Hi everyone, I stumbled upon this thread.
And I'd have to say that I disagree with the conclusions some of you folks came to.
MS is good ...
MG is not ...
I recently went thru an ordeal with a group of meat birds, losing the entire flock of 50 because of MS.
Don't want to bore you all with a long story but it started with complications in shipping, and it ended with losing 31 and me culling the last nineteen (19).
Because of being meat birds and seeing all the things the birds went thru, ie; twisted necks, twisted joints in some cases the legs were completely backwards.
Joints locked in place, huge blisters on the breast, raspy voice, green and yellow poop. Those are the ones I can remember.
From what I read incubation is seven days so normally when you find out the first bird is sick, the rest of the flock is already exposed and most likely will have it.
Also according to the article I read the disease can be carried thru the eggs to the unborn chicks.
It can be spread by air, dust and by close proximity to birds carrying the disease.
Once you have it it's very difficult to get rid of, clean up is a nightmare.
Luckily for me, my laying chickens were completely on the other side of the property, It will usually not jump to water fowl, also lucky for me.
Unfortunately the only real way of stopping it is eliminate the effected.
Good Luck, and hope no one else gets this problem with their flocks.
I can't find the exact links I had when I was researching, but here are two general links I found again. If I find the one I found before I will post it also.
http://www.ask.com/wiki/Mycoplasma_synoviae?lang=en
http://www.thepoultrysite.com/diseaseinfo/99/mycoplasma-synoviae-infection-ms-infectious-synovitis/