Olivia McClure
LSU AgCenter
Gonzales - Thérèse Harris delights in getting to know the unique personalities of the animals she raises on her family’s farm in Breaux Bridge.
Some cattle — like Juanita, the sleek black heifer Harris brought to this year’s LSU AgCenter Livestock Show — are pretty easy to get along with. Others, not so much.
Pigs are the hardest to prepare for showing, Harris said, requiring daily training. And goats?
“Goats are the funnest things ever,” she said. “They’re the weirdest creatures, and I love them.”
Harris joined St. Martin Parish 4-H in third grade and became an exhibitor in the LSU Ag-Center Livestock Show the following year. Now a senior at Cecilia High School, Harris — with Juanita by her side — made her final trip around the show ring during this year’s event, held Feb. 14 to 21 at the Lamar-Dixon Expo Center in Gonzales.
It was a bittersweet moment: Harris’ family has been involved in this annual show that attracts youths and livestock from around Louisiana for decades, and she is the youngest in a long line of exhibitors.
Her three older siblings all showed. Her mother, Gigi Harris, exhibited animals in the 1980s; back then, the show was at the John M. Parker Coliseum on the LSU campus. And her grandfather started the family tradition in 1956.
“They were farmers. They lived off the land,” Gigi Harris said of her father’s family, which farmed the same property where she and her family live today. “He wasn’t really allowed to participate in extracurricular activities. I’m assuming he got to show a pig because it was being raised for the family to consume. But he came from a family that loved working, farming, growing things, so that was a special part of his life. In fact, his FFA jacket was really the only jacket he had, and he was very proud of it.”
Harris, a school counselor, was excited when her own children became old enough to begin showing livestock. Times had changed since her father’s humble beginnings in the world of raising and showing livestock — but she believed carrying on the tradition could provide valuable lessons.
“It’s been important teaching moments for my kids,” she said. “What I’ve tried to preach to them is their projects are like any other relationship. You’re going to have to work hard at it, it’s a daily effort and your animal depends on you.”
When animals didn’t cooperate, Harris encouraged Thérèse and her siblings to look for the positive.
“Each animal — and each person — has a quality or aspect of themselves that might be more difficult, and recognizing that quality as an asset is really the true gift,” she said.
Coming to the state show is a big deal, the culmination of a year’s worth of work getting an animal ready for judging. It’s a busy, thrilling atmosphere where participants can meet people from all over Louisiana.
As fun as the show is, the Harrises find even greater enjoyment in the everyday tasks that come with caring for their animals — and learning each one’s quirks.
“Every morning and night, you have to go check on them and make sure they’re OK,” Thérèse Harris said. “What I’ve learned is patience — a lot of patience — and how to care for another living being. There’s so many people who don’t get that experience, and I love that I have that, and I want to continue raising animals because they’re the light of my day, really.”
Always drawn toward a career in a trade, Harris has participated in her school’s welding and electrical programs and is applying to apprenticeships to become an electrician. She believes her 4-H experience will be beneficial.
“Everything that I’ve learned through 4-H and livestock is all hands-on,” she said. “It’s problem-solving. It’s figuring out how to fix this certain situation.”
While this year’s show had both mother and daughter feeling a bit sentimental, Gigi Harris knows there will be a sense of continuity as she and her family keep working the land, just as they have for generations.
“The exciting part for most of us is being able to have the animals and raise them and live on a farm and grow your own things,” she said. “We’re still going to have to let the chickens out every morning. We’ll still have to feed every night. We’ll still be fixing fences about three times a month. So that’ll all be the same.”
St. Martin Parish 4-H’er Thérèse Harris walks around the show ring with her heifer, Juanita, Feb. 18 during the LSU AgCenter Livestock Show. (Craig Gautreaux/LSU AgCenter)
Thérèse Harris, a 4-H’er from St. Martin Parish, washes her heifer, Juanita, during the 2026 LSU AgCenter Livestock Show. (Olivia McClure/LSU AgCenter)
