Hands on Agriculture

By Stephanie Schupska

Most students never get the chance to insert an endotracheal tube into anything, much less down a chicken's throat. It's not likely that they'll ever operate on a live chicken, either. But Tracey Troutman isn't like most students.

During a biomedical science lab in March, Troutman's team carefully numbed the incision site on the chicken's lower abdomen as they readied to make the first cut. Their goal was to remove the chicken's egg from the egg shell gland before she laid it.

"We anesthetize the birds, make an incision, sew them up and hope they live," Troutman said of the chickens they operated on in her spring poultry science surgery techniques lab class.

On that Thursday, the chicken popped her egg out before the students got the endotracheal tube down her throat and put her under. But they still had an incision to make. Their second goal was to examine the chicken's reproduction system and close the site.

For Troutman, a fourth-year avian biology and biological sciences major agriculture is second nature, even if operating on chickens is something relatively new.

"My dad farms part-time," she said. "We have a small farm with cotton, corn, cattle. I assumed everybody knew I had cows in my backyard."

She grew up in Rochelle, a small town in middle Georgia that has one high school and two traffic lights.

"A lot of people don't know where groceries come from besides the store, or where an egg comes from," Troutman said. "And they've never seen a chicken alive. I find myself answering tons of questions, like 'Do you give them steroids?' No, with thousands of birds on a farm, the cost and time commitments would be enormous and impractical for the industry. Instead, birds are bred for size and performance."

As a student in the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, she feels "like I'm at home. People are always smiling and helpful." She found it's not necessarily that way on the rest of the UGA campus.

Some of Troutman's biology-major friends in other UGA colleges get lost in their large classes. She sees a big difference between their education and her own. "Their teachers don't know them," she said.

She has found that one thing is lacking at CAES. "I think the college of agriculture needs more minorities," she said. "And UGA does, too."

Troutman is a senior member of the CAES Ambassadors program and of the UGA chapter of MANRRS, the national society of Minorities in Agriculture, Natural Resources and Related Sciences.

"I have a passion and willingness to serve both organizations and to promote agriculture to people who don't know about it," Troutman said.

She also spent two years gaining research experience with the UGA Center for Undergraduate Research Opportunities. In 2002, she studied educational psychology. In 2003, she moved into poultry science research.

Troutman plans to graduate in Fall 2006 and either get her master's degree, go to pharmacy school or work for an agribusiness.

This summer Troutman has been selected to serve as an intern with the
Georgia Department of Agriculture international trade division in Brussels, Belgium.

The program will provide practical work experience in international trade and support the European office in fulfilling its mission to promote Georgia grown agricultural commodities.

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