For an urban university, it may be a well-kept secret that some of the best dairy products in Louisiana are produced on the LSU campus.

Those who attended the dairy field day on Nov. 2 were shown what happens at the campus dairy and the creamery–from feeding young calves to making ice cream.

LSU AgCenter director of animal sciences Gary Hay opened the field day with a little history on the dairy science program on campus.

“There’s actually been a working dairy on this campus since 1904 when four cows were bought from the University of Missouri,” Hay said.

Those cows were shipped down the Mississippi River on a barge and started what is now a full-time dairy that milks nearly 100 cows twice every day, Hay said.

During the field day, participants toured the campus dairy or the campus creamery, where the dairy store is located.

At the dairy, the group toured the milking parlor and was shown how the operation works with most of its labor provided by students.

“We wanted to show them the work that we are doing in disease prevention and calf growth and management,” Hay said.

At the creamery, they saw how ice cream and cheese are made and participated in a taste test of milk to see if they could tell which of three samples had an oxidation problem that affects the flavor.

“In the creamery, we’re developing functional foods, which are dairy foods with enhanced nutritional qualities,” Hay said. “We also are doing some research with product shelf life to make products last a little bit longer.”

The campus dairy represents a truly unique marriage between the LSU AgCenter and the LSU College of Agriculture, said John Russin, LSU AgCenter vice chancellor for research.

“Our research interacts with graduate student training,” Russin said. “It’s one of the few places that this is done so thoroughly.”

One of the hallmarks of the dairy science program and the graduate program is the tremendous support by clientele groups and by the industry, not only in the state, but around the country, said Ken Koonce, dean of the College of Agriculture.

“We have one of the few campus dairies in the country, and we’re very proud of that,” Koonce said.

The LSU AgCenter has 16 research stations around the state, and they all have field days. The tour was a chance to see the research on campus.

“We are connected with our clientele through the stations around the state, but we noticed this is not the case with our campus stations,” Russin said. “So I worked with Dr. Hay to put together this field day, and we are so happy you are here to see the work that’s being done.”

The dairy program at LSU was one of the first research programs with the experiment station, according to Hay.

“The program started in the late 1890s at the Calhoun Research Station, which was the first experiment station in Louisiana and was primarily a dairy research facility,” Hay said.

The dairy teaching program started in the early 1920s, and in 2006, the School of Animal Sciences was created by the merger of the dairy science program with the livestock and poultry programs, which now has more than 400 undergraduate and over 40 graduate students.

Hay said the main purpose for the field day was to bring in producers, people from the dairy industry, dairy processors and related industry people to show them some of the research and activities going on in the department.

“This was a way to also show some of the things we do here to support their industry,” Hay said.

Johnny Morgan