By intensively grazing smaller areas with higher stocking pressure, he was able to increase the amount of dry matter used from 535 kilograms to 1 tonne a hectare.

He and wife Leanne, parents Allen and Merrill and business partner Tex Cummings run 1200 Merino breeding ewes for wool and prime lamb production.

After a run of dry years, Chris said he was struggling to find enough feed for stock and decided to intensively graze a 93ha paddock with 220 ewes as a trial.

"After years of drought, we wanted to utilise more pasture and increase our stocking rates without ruining the soil," he said.

Restricting sheep in smaller grazing blocks reduced selective grazing and allowed pastures to be evenly grazed.

"Part of the problem is that sheep go out and eat their favourite bits and don't eat the bits we want them to so we make them crash graze and eat everything in the paddock."

Rotational grazing also allowed pastures to rest before re-grazing or possibly reapt for grain.

Chris said the system also allowed for better management of paddocks being with high soil erosion risks.

"We can actually fence the problem area and allow the sheep to eat around it," he said.

"Usually if you saw a hill that was getting a bit 'drifty' you would move the sheep on regardless of how much feed was left in the paddock, but now we just cut them off with an electric fence and allow them to keep eating."

Portable electric fencing was used to graze a 93ha paddock, cut into 12ha cells.

The paddock was dry sown with Tahara triticale, barley or oats in late April and sheep began to graze as soon as the plant had anchored.

Chris used a front and back fence to give stock access to a limited area of fresh feed and to stop sheep having access to the area previously grazed.

He shifted the fence down the paddock when needed to provide sheep access to the next 12ha of fresh feed.