Students attending the LSU AgMagic exhibit at the State Fair of Louisiana gather around an incubator to watch chicks hatch. (Photo by Mary Ann Van Osdell. Click on photo for downloadable image.)

Ar’Avea Washington from Calvary Baptist Academy pets Elsie the Cow at the LSU AgCenter AgMagic exhibit at the State Fair of Louisiana. (Photo by Mary Ann Van Osdell. Click on photo for downloadable image.)

LSU AgCenter agent Lee Faulk tells students how to take care of the Growum planting containers that each received at AgMagic at the State Fair. (Photo by Mary Ann Van Osdell. Click on photo for downloadable image.)

News Release Distributed 11/10/11

SHREVEPORT, La. – AgMagic at the State Fair is taking children through a journey of Louisiana agriculture and economically beneficial commodities they may use every day.

The LSU AgCenter exhibit includes guided tours Nov. 9-11 for school groups. Organizers expect about 2,500 third- through sixth-graders to participate.

Displays and events at AgMagic include seeing a mini cotton gin operate, digging for vegetables, touching baby chickens and looking at insects through a microscope. Features include crops, forestry, wildlife, horticulture, entomology, animals and 4-H.

LSU AgCenter agent Lee Faulk assisted by Master Gardeners showed ornamental and vegetable gardens. “It’s very good to grow things. The best tasting food is food you grow yourself,” Faulk said. “For plants to grow, they need soil, sunlight and water.”

Children received Growums, planting containers in which seeds soak up water and grow. The containers included a herb garden or selections of plants that could be used for stir fry or pizza.

“These kids are modernized and don’t know where products come from or that they are from Louisiana,” said Karen Massie, 4-H adviser at Calvary Baptist Academy. “They are seeing an actual garden and now know that food doesn’t just come from a can or a frozen bag.”

The row crop section focused on the main commodities produced in northwest Louisiana – corn, cotton and soybeans, said LSU AgCenter agent Josh Salley.

Bentley Fitzpatrick, an LSU AgCenter research associate, ran samples of cotton through a mini gin. “Cotton has been cultivated since 7000 B.C.,” he said, adding that the cotton gin was invented in 1794.

In the World of Wonder area, exhibits and hands-on activities centered on forestry, wildlife, camping, fishing and other outdoor recreation. Students were given a wood product and asked to stand at a designated area of its source, whether sap, bark, cellulose, root, trunk, or seeds, fruit and leaves. Ricky Kilpatrick, LSU AgCenter forester, said baseball bats come from the trunks of ash trees that grow in Louisiana.

Elsie the Cow was this year’s special guest. A six-year-old Jersey, she is the 33rd cow sponsored by Borden Dairy Company since her 1939 introduction at the World’s Fair in New York City. Larry Campbell with Borden said Elsie travels 200,000 miles a year to fairs, parades, festivals and store openings, seeing 11 million to 15 million people.

“Jersey cows are docile,” said LSU AgCenter agent Mindy Kile when asked why Elsie was so calm. “They like people,” she said. “Her life is spent to make milk.”

Other cattle produce meat, said LSU AgCenter agent Alex Shook. He also spoke about chickens, saying they are produced for meat and eggs, which take three weeks to hatch.

A six-foot-tall white chicken mascot lingered at the poultry area as children got to see real ones pecking the shell of eggs, trying to hatch.

“My favorite thing was the pizza garden, and I love the baby chicks and the cotton because we’d all be walking around with no clothes on without it,” said Ar’Avea Washington, a fifth-grader at Calvary.

New this year was a “Germ Cave,” which is an interactive cave where children learn about the benefits of hand-washing to avoid the spread of germs and bacteria. They were given Glo Potion, a hand cream that shows the germs on hands under black light.

LSU AgCenter agent Connie Aclin told the students they should wash their hands after playing outside, going to the bathroom, coughing or sneezing, or petting an animal and before eating or cooking. She told them to rub with soap and water for 20 seconds and use a paper towel to turn off the faucet.

Visitors finished their AgMagic experience by leaving their mark on the 4-H graffiti wall, playing 4-H hopscotch and putting together a parish puzzle illustrating top commodities.

Children also visited a petting zoo with goats, pigs, horses and rabbits.

Mary Ann Van Osdell