Seed Spreader

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c. 1900

Overview

This is a homemade Seed Spreader that was possibly adapted from an obsolete two-row crop seeder. It was used locally for planting larger seeds, possibly pumpkin seeds and whilst originally designed to be pulled by 2 horses it has been converted to be pulled by a tractor and may have been used as a super spreader in its later life.

Historical information

Since cultivation began planting crops was done by scattering seeds on the ground or placing seeds in the ground individually. This tedious back breaking work was changed forever in 1828 when Austin & Levi Robbins invented the one row seed planter which was a human-powered, wheelbarrow-style seeding device which they declared could plant "any kind of seeds, and any number of them at a time, and at any required distance, as fast as a man can walk up to 10 acres a day!" By the 1850s the seed planter was overtaken by the seed drill which could plant many rows at a time by injecting the seed into the soil directly behind a plough head.

Details

Registration number

cwa-org-124-2023.60

Item type

Machinery

Material

Iron

Steel

Contextual Information

When using this Seed Spreader, the farmer would first plough the paddock to break up the soil ready for planting. When ready to plant he would empty the bags of seed into the spreader hopper. The horse / tractor would pull the spreader and the wheel rotation would deliver power to a gear which turned a shaft and agitated the seeds in the hopper. The seeds would then drop down from the hopper through 2 chutes into a lower tray where an auger would feed the seeds into 2 downward spouts which dropped the seeds onto opposite sides of a horizontal steel circular disc where 6 raised vanes would catch the seeds. The rotation action of the disc vanes would then spread the seeds evenly over a distance of up to 5 metres wide. The spread distance could be controlled by changing the distance between the downward spouts and / or the speed of the horse. Usually the farmer would run harrows over the paddock after planting to bury the seeds.

Keywords

Busselton

Farm Machinery

Year

c. 1900

Related Objects

Parent records

B11 Machinery Shed

Busselton Historical Society

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