A farmlet study was conducted to determine the effect of stocking rate on feeding strategies and individual milk production of autumn calving grazing dairy cows. Four farmlets (2 per treatment) representing a pasture based dairy system in Uruguay, which combines annual with perennial pastures under a 4-yr rotation, were grazed either with 1.5 (MSR) or 2.0 (HSR) milking cows per hectare from June to December 2016. Ninety-six cows were randomized to the farmlets based on parity (3.3+ 1.3), BW (500 ± 91) and BCS (2.95 ± 0.87). Every week, the number of daily grazing sessions (0, 1, or 2), the amount of roughage offered, the amount of concentrate feed in the milking parlor and the individual milk production and composition were recorded. Grazing rules were the same for the 4 farmlets, as well as the amount of concentrate feed to each individual cow. The amount of roughage offered and the addition or not of soybean hull as a diet corrector, were defined for each farmlet based on sward allowance and the number of grazing sessions. The data were analyzed with a mixed model that included stocking rate and month as fixed effects and farmlet as a random effect. The repeated measurement was week and an autoregressive covariance structure (order 1) was selected for all responsive variables. Differences were declared significant when P < 0.05. Individual milk production was not different between treatments (24.4 ± 0.6) though HSR cows ate more silage (2.7 vs 2.1 kgDM/d), hay (1.2 vs 0.8 kgDM/d) and soybean hull (1.2 vs 0.83kgDM/d) than MSR cows. Mean concentrate intake was 5.5 ± 0.09 kgDM/d. MSR cows had higher herbage allowance (15.4 vs 13.4 kgDM/d) than HSR cows. Besides, MSR cows were able to graze a larger proportion (0.72 vs 0.65) and were forced to stay in the fed pad a shorter proportion (0.28 vs 0.35) of the total eating time. We concluded that under well-managed pastures, increasing stocking rate will affect diet composition and feeding strategy, which ultimately might have more negative side effects on long-term dairy system performance.