Despite considerable effort to promote formal feed budgeting in New Zealand, survey data suggests it is only adopted by 20% of farmers (Nuthall & Bishop-Hurley, 1999). Recent work (Gray et al., 2003) has identified that farmers may use a different approach - micro-budgeting - to manage feed. Rather than operate at a whole farm level, micro-budgeting focuses at the paddock level. This paper describes micro-budgeting as used by a high performing hill country sheep and cattle farmer to manage pasture quality over spring and a decision support model developed to help other farmers undertake this proces