The aim of this work was to evaluate in pasture based commercial dairy farms the effect of different productive strategies linked to different combinations of stocking rate (SR, cow/ha), and individual milk production (IMP, L/cow/day) and the availability and condition of the infrastructure to fed the animals, on productivity, diet structure and margin over feeding cost. Sixteen dairy farms were categorized according to SR and IMP in 4 groups (n = 4/group): high SR and high IMP (1.51 ± 0.02 and 24.8 ± 0.42; HH), high SR and low IMP (1.44 ± 0.02 and 18.3 ± 0.26; HL), low SR and high IMP (1.09 ± 0.02 and 23.8 ± 0.25; LH) and low SR and low IMP (1.00 ± 0.01 and 16.2 ± 0.23; LL). Farms were visited biweekly (June 2016/May 2017) to record SR, IMP and the diet supplied to milking cows. Once in each season the availability and condition (m²/cow; mud presence and mud deep around the fed path and the rest area) were recorded. All response variables were analyzed with a mix model with farm category as fixed effect and season as random effect. The HH strategy resulted in the highest productivity and margin over feeding cost (Table 1). Strategies based on high IMP use higher levels of supplements despite the stocking rate. No significant differences were detected among strategies on the availability and conditions of fed paths and rest areas. The HH system shows better performance than any other combination of SR and IMP on productivity and margin over feeding despite the availability and condition of the fed path and rest area. Table 1. Productivity, margin over feeding and animals dry matter intake of pasture based dairy systems with high stocking rate (SR) and high individual milk production (IMP) (HH) high SR and low IMP (HL) low SR and high IMP (LH) and low SR and low IMP (LL)

Item	HH	HL	LH	LL	SEM
Productivity (L/ha/yr)	14,819a	9,527bc	11,498ab	5,986c	1,566
Margin over feeding (U$S/ha/yr)	1,998a	1,443bx	1,451bx	1,004by	114.4
DMI (kg DM/cow/d)
Herbage	6.93b	7.94ab	6.1b	9.61a	0.621
Conserved forage	5.19a	3.37abx	5.81ay	2.34b	0.629
Concentrate	7.12ax	4.88aby	6.82a	3.47b	0.617

Values within a same row differ at ^a–cP ≤ 0.05 or ^x,yP ≤ 0.10.