Sierra Muzquiz checks on the broiler chickens in the Poultry Research Unit at the University Farm.
Many high school students come to college to learn the skills to start a business. Not as many have already run a successful business in their planned major.
Sierra Muzquiz is one of those early entrepreneurs. Before she became an official Aggie, she had already run a micro-scale chicken farm at her home in Fayetteville.
When she was in sixth grade, Muzquiz’s uncle bought her two baby chicks, a rooster and a hen. She and her dad looked up how to care for and breed them. By high school, she was breeding more than five varieties for customers who wanted unusual pets or colorful eggs, funded by a loan from the Farm Service Agency that her Cape Fear High School FFA teacher helped her obtain.
“At peak production, I had about 300 birds,” she said.
When it was time to choose a university program, the Department of Animal Sciences at N.C. A&T was Muzquiz’s first choice.
“I knew that N.C. A&T had smaller class sizes, but still had everything that you could get at a bigger school,” she said. “I knew that we’d be on the farm as freshmen, with hands-on access to animals. I also knew that I wouldn’t have to fight for lab time or for my professors’ attention.”
Now, as a senior, Muzquiz says that her decision has paid off. A recipient of the Dowdy Scholarship, the university’s premier undergraduate merit scholarship, she has worked since her freshman year in the lab and at the university Poultry Research Unit with assistant professor Yewande Fasina, Ph.D., gaining experience and assisting with Fasina’s research on broiler chickens and salmonella reduction.
“I am testing the effects of green tea extract and ginger extract on reducing the growth rates of salmonella in broiler chicks,” Muzquiz said. Green tea and ginger have natural antioxidant and health-promoting qualities, making them possible natural solutions to the huge production-farming problem of keeping the flock healthy.
“It would be tremendously beneficial to have a natural remedy to reduce salmonella levels,” Muzquiz said.
After graduation, Muzquiz plans to get a master’s degree in public health and then, possibly, on to medical school, with a goal of working in an underserved area.
“N.C. A&T gave me the opportunity to thrive and succeed,” she said. “My original first choice was definitely the right one.”
