When he was young, Glen Gentry had dreams of one day running a ranch. Having grown up around cattle north of Baton Rouge, he enjoyed working with animals and inherited his father’s and grandfather’s passion for agriculture.
Gentry’s family also valued education. His mother and father both worked for the East Baton Rouge Parish school system.
“I wanted to go to ranch manager school,” Gentry recalled. “But my parents, being the parents that they were, wouldn’t let me just do a two-year deal. I had to get a four-year degree, and then I could go do what I wanted to do. So that’s how I ended up at LSU in animal science.”
After he graduated from LSU with his bachelor’s degree, Gentry got his chance to work on a ranch in northwestern Arkansas. But a little over a year later in 1991, he was ready to come back home and took a position as a research associate for cattle work at the LSU AgCenter Bob R. Jones-Idlewild Research Station near Clinton. He also decided to go back to school, earning a master’s degree and doctorate under renowned AgCenter animal scientist Robert Godke.
Today, Gentry is in charge of Idlewild, serving as resident coordinator for that station as well as the Doyle Chambers Central Research Station in Baton Rouge.
“This is where I grew up,” he said, gesturing toward Idlewild’s picturesque pastures and pine trees.
Idlewild has been the scene of some major career accomplishments for Gentry. He’s been in the news recently for his work on a bait that uses sodium nitrite to kill feral hogs, which earned a patent in August. It took eight years to come up with a winning formulation, and Gentry believes the bait will be an important tool for landowners and farmers who are struggling with growing populations of feral swine and the damage they cause.
Earlier in his career, Gentry focused on research on assisted reproductive technologies for horses, beef cattle and white-tailed deer.
“In fact, that barn over there on the hill is where we did a lot of work with white-tailed deer,” he said, glancing toward a barn at the research station. “We actually developed a protocol to synchronize white-tailed deer to artificially inseminate them and produce more valuable offspring.”
He also led a group that developed a way to freeze equine embryos so they can be transferred to recipients later. Unlike the embryos of species such as cattle, those of horses have a unique, protective capsule that necessitate the different freezing and storage process.
Gentry has always enjoyed working with livestock.
“My dad had cattle,” Gentry said. “But it goes farther back than that. My grandfather was a county agent in Jeff Davis Parish, and then he moved from there and was the first department head in animal science at McNeese.”
Working at the AgCenter has allowed him to combine his interest in animals with opportunities to conduct research.
“I like solving or trying to solve problems for our stakeholders in production agriculture that look to the AgCenter for answers,” he said.
Gentry’s career has also included stints at the AgCenter Reproductive Biology Center, which is now part of the Central Research Station; on the LSU Baton Rouge campus; and at the AgCenter Dean Lee Research and Extension Center near Alexandria. Recently he was named interim director of the AgCenter Southeast Region. But he has spent the most time at Idlewild, where he feels right at home.
What is Gentry’s favorite thing about working at the Idlewild station?
“Other than it’s the prettiest one in the system? And I’ll stand by that till the day I die,” he said with a smile. “It’s close enough to campus to where we have students come up and we have faculty come up. But it’s far enough away that it’s not an urban situation. It’s a rural situation. It’s quiet. The only sound we hear is birds. I really like that.”
Olivia McClure is a writer, videographer and photographer in AgCenter Communications.
Video by Olivia McClure
Glen Gentry is pictured with the cattle herd at the LSU AgCenter Bob R. Jones-Idlewild Research Station. Photo by Olivia McClure
The lake at the AgCenter Bob R. Jones-Idlewild Research Station near Clinton was originally built in the 1950s when the state of Louisiana was planning to use the property as a state park. Photo by Johnny Morgan
A Research Station’s Colorful Past
From being used as a plantation to housing mental patients and prisoners, the Bob R. Jones-Idlewild Research Station near Clinton had a colorful past before it became an LSU AgCenter facility.
The station’s history traces back to 1900, when New Jersey-based White House Land Company sold 1,803 acres of land to J.W. Grippen. A New Jersey native, Grippen had married a Clinton resident, Kathryn Bennett, four years earlier. He called the land the John W. Grippen Idlewild Plantation.
A few years later in 1909, Grippen sold the plantation to O.L. Bennett, who then sold it in 1918 to the East Louisiana State Hospital. Idlewild functioned as a colony of the mental hospital until 1936, when it was sold to a member of the hospital board.
In 1940, Idlewild was seized by the state and turned over the Louisiana State Penitentiary, which used it for prisoner housing. It was a predecessor to Camp J, a restrictive unit at the state prison that is now closed.
Plans emerged to turn the property into a state park. The state built a dam and overflow structure in 1956 — but the same year, the site ended up being leased to LSU.
Over the next three years, and with a budget of just $100,000 and five staff members, the land was transformed into an agricultural research station. Bob R. Jones, a local landowner and outdoorsman, was instrumental in establishing the research station; his name was added to that of the station in 2007 to honor his contributions.
Early research focused on animal science and forages. A small cattle herd was transferred from the now-defunct Calhoun Research Station, an AgCenter facility located near Monroe. Scientists at Idlewild developed the Louisiana S-1 Clover variety, which is still used today.
Other work included agronomy studies with potatoes, corn and ryegrass; variety development for several fruit species; and forestry projects involving firebreak construction, timber thinning and regeneration.
Aquatic weeds, cervids (members of the deer family), beef cattle and feral hogs are major focus areas at the station today.