About Us

Down Burst Seeders started in 2019 after the founder, Doug Holmes, grew frustrated with trying to use broadcast spreaders to plant small food plots on his family farm outside of Reed City Michigan.  Here is the story in his own words:

I have been planting food plots with my father and brother for over 30 years on our Northern Michigan hunting property/farm.  Over the years we have built up a modest collection of farm equipment to improve planting success.  We started out with a 1954 Alice Chalmers tractor, a 2-bottom mold board plow, a disc, and a 3pt broadcast spreader.  Eventually a brand new 35hp New Holland tractor was added along with an old 4 row corn planter, an older 10ft grain drill, and an even older 2 gang cultipacker.  In 2017, my father, Emmett, passed away after a long battle with cancer.  My brother Matt and I, along with some help from our sister Kristine, took over managing the family property.  At the time, I lived in Colorado and was only able to travel to the farm a few times a year to prep and plant food plots.  I soon realized that the conventional planting method (plow, disc, cultipack, plant, cultipack again) we had been doing since the beginning was too time consuming.  At the time no-till planting methods were really becoming popular in the food plot world, and I believed a no-till drill would be the answer to the problem.  I began researching no-till drills and was shocked at the price and tractor requirements.  Even the smallest 3pt drill available weighed more than the 35hp New Holland could lift.  This meant a pull behind drill was the only option.  After years of trying to pull the old conventional drill around our small food plots I knew this was not the solution I wanted.  I also downloaded and read every no-till drill owner’s manual I could find online.  All of them had extensive maintenance requirements and most had a rather lengthy and involved calibration process.  At the end of the day, I decided the value was just not there for a no-till drill.  We purchased an old 3pt rototiller to at least speed up the plowing and discing part of our planting method, and began experimenting with simple spray, broadcast, and cultipack no-till methods.    Using these tools, we were able to prepare and plant 2 to 3 acres of food plots in a single weekend.  One weekend in 2019, we completed prepping a new perennial clover plot and I attempted to spread the clover seed with an over the shoulder bag spreader.  It was midday on Sunday and my flight back to Denver was leaving in just a few hours.  In my haste, I apparently set the seed gate too large and proceeded to spread an acre’s worth of seed in the first 200 yards of walking the field.  To say I was a bit irritated is an understatement.  Pretty much the entire trip was a bust at this point since I didn’t have time to get more seed to fix it, and it would be several weeks before I could return.  There has got to be a better way to spread small seeds like clovers and brassicas!  I began researching all seed spreading devices in existence and found some interesting possibilities.  Drop spreaders seemed like the way to go since the spread width is fixed making it a lot easier to control the seed rate and avoid spreading seed past the edges of our small narrow plots.  The only issue was all available drop seeders are designed for the high spread rates used for lawn seed and fertilizer.  At that moment my mechanical engineering background kicked in and I decided to build my own drop spreader specifically for small seed species that are difficult to control with conventional broadcast spreaders.  Down Burst Seeders was born!  My first prototype was built out of plywood and PVC pipe and featured a small 12V air compressor with a needle valve type seed meter of my own design.  This first prototype worked well, all the photos of clover plots on our website were planted using this machine in May of 2020. 

 

At this point, I knew I had something worth developing further so I spent the next year refining the design in my free time in Colorado.  By the summer of 2021, I believed I had something that could really help land managers and began working on Down Burst Seeders full time.  I took a step back and spent some time defining what this machine is meant to do.  I landed on the following list;

Must spread tiny seeds evenly and accurately.

Must be quick and easy to calibrate.

Must work equally well with any planting vehicle (ATV, Side by Side, Tractor, etc.)

Must have bullet proof durability.

Must be as maintenance free as possible.

Must be easy to transport and store out of the weather.

I took a long, hard look at the air compressor/needle valve design and the complexity that it added to the machine and ultimately decided to replace it with a more reliable ground wheel driven fluted roller seed meter.  Two years and several prototype designs later, Down Burst Seeders was launched.  Along the way, we decided to move back home to Michigan to be closer to family and our farm which we now call “Emmett’s Acres” in honor of our father who loved it so much. 

Thank you for your interest in Down Burst Seeders.  If you have any questions about our product, please don’t hesitate to use the Contact page to send an email directly to my inbox.  I will gladly respond as soon as possible. 

Please check out our Facebook page, Instagram page, and Youtube channel as well for more videos and information about Down Burst Seeders. 

Good Luck this Fall!

Doug Holmes