That’s why farmer, Greg Weber, of Weber Farming, has developed a new contraption which he calls the Grass Storm. It hangs from a helicopter from a 33.5 metre sling.

Mr Weber has been sowing Mitchell grass for years, but his country can get rough and it is hard to get among the timber, so he now flies the seed on and uses his cattle to trample it in.

“The idea was I just wanted to fly the seed on. No one would sit in a tractor - it was just that rough,” he said.

However, it took a bit of trial and error before they had a machine that could not only easily be carried by a helicopter, but also handle the clumpy nature of the seed.

The design has six augers in a box which push the seed out, and the box hangs below the helicopter.

“When we first built it, we had the six augers running in one direction, and all (the seed) did was balled and compacted at one end,” Mr Weber said.

“It compacted that tight that you couldn’t even push your finger into it.”

He changed the design so every second auger ran in alternating directions, so any seed that didn’t go through the hole and onto the paddock below was taken back to the start.

Mr Weber’s new machine can carry 250 kilograms of seed per load, which does 80 hectares at a rate of three kilograms of seed a hectare.

The unit also is equipped with an eight horsepower Honda engine and a 10 amp charge system, which powers the clutch, lights and other electronics. 

The airseeder electric clutch runs a 60:1 ratio gear box, which engages the six augers.

Mr Weber said the electric clutch was installed by Troy Byer, Troy Byer Electrical, Gunnedah, which the helicopter pilot could operate from their GPS.

It was also fitted with a traffic light system on top of the box so the pilot could look down and see what the seeding box was doing.

An orange light meant its engine was running, a green light indicated the clutch was in gear, and a red light indicated the box was low on seed. The seed level was monitored by an in-built level sensor.

Mr Weber harvests his own seed, having set up a nursery area after attending a Stan Parsons grazing management course in the 1990s.

He learnt the lesson “no grass, no graze”, and since a switch from set stocking to mob grazing says he can now calculate how much grass is in front of his stock, and therefore can see when a feed shortage is coming.

“I start selling my stock before I hit the crisis - I’ve always won like that,” he said.

The new nursery was part of a plan he came home with from the course.

“People would say ‘that grass seed’s worth a lot of money - how can you just throw it out on your paddock instead of selling it?’.”

Yet, Mr Weber said it was worth more on his own farm, as it had a high germination rate and established well, even if it sat for a while until it rained.

“If you look after it, it just gets thicker and thicker each year,” he said.

Mr Weber spread four to five tonne of seed in late October, which was still waiting for rain to germinate.

“Grass is the sort of thing that’ll lay there and wait for rain until it will germinate - if it doesn’t germinate this summer, it’ll germinate next summer,” he said.

He contracts Commercial Helicopters from Mudgee to fly the seed onto the paddocks and McLeod Metal Fabrication in Walgett built the seed box under Mr Weber’s instructions.

Before it got airborne, they had to test its stability, which included the tail design.

“We built a gantry off the side of one of my trucks to hang it off,” Mr Weber said.

“We drove down the road at 70 kilometres an hour and it flew straight.”

As a bit of fun they also added some colour to the new seeder.

“We just went that extra mile… we put the stickers on it to make it look a bit flash.”