Akins is a an assistant scientist and dairy extension specialist with a focus on dairy heifer nutrition and management. He works with the Marshfield Agricultural Research Station to conduct heifer research studies to evaluate nutrition and forage feeding strategies to control heifer growth and costs of production.
Akin’s project will use new automated individual gate feeding system at Marshfield Agricultural Research Station. Individual animal measurements are critical data for many dairy and animal science researchers to be able to estimate an individual animal’s efficiency and to make genomic predictions of efficiency. This new automated system will improve the turn-around time of feeding trials for several researchers needing feed intake measures and get research results to the public more quickly.