How this calculator gets from an acre rate to a bag weight
Every published seeding recommendation is written as pounds of Pure Live Seed (PLS) per acre. Your bag is not pure live seed. Somewhere inside it is inert material — chaff, dust, coating, grit, the occasional weed seed — and some share of the real seed will never sprout. A recommendation and a bag weight are therefore two different quantities, and converting one into the other is the entire job of this page:
Bag lbs = method rate (drilled or broadcast) × acres ÷ (purity % × germination %)
Three things drive that answer: how big the plot honestly is, whether you are drilling or broadcasting, and what the analysis tag on the bag says. All three are easy to get wrong in the same direction — toward buying and spreading more seed than the ground can use.
Measuring an irregular plot without flattering it
Almost no food plot is a rectangle. It is a logging deck with a hooked tail, a powerline strip that narrows toward one end, an old field with a boggy corner and a stump row down one side. The temptation is to pace the longest length, pace the widest width, multiply, and call the result an acre.
That method cannot help but overestimate. Multiplying the extreme dimensions describes the smallest rectangle that would contain the plot, so every square foot of timber, ditch and turnaround caught inside that box gets counted as ground you intend to plant. On a genuinely ragged shape the difference is large, and it is invisible, because nothing about the resulting number looks wrong.
Pacing stacks a second error on top of the first. A stride you calibrated walking a mown yard shortens in standing cover, on a side slope, and in mud, so the same count of paces across worse footing quietly reports more distance than the ground actually holds. If you are going to pace, calibrate the same day you measure: walk a marked 200-foot run, count your paces, and divide to get your real stride length. A tape, a wheel or a phone's GPS area tool beats pacing outright.
The honest approach is to break the plot into shapes you can measure and add them together. Rectangles are length times width; triangles are half the base times the height; a curving edge can be handled as a series of narrow strips, each measured at its own width. Then subtract the ground you will not plant — the stump row, the wet hole that never dries, the shaded northern margin where seedlings never establish. If you measured in square feet or square yards, enter those units directly; the calculator divides by 43,560 or 4,840 for you and prints the acreage it used. Check that acreage figure before you look at the pounds, because it is the input carrying the most uncertainty.
Per acre, per bag, and the partial-acre trap
Rates are published per acre. Seed is sold in bags. Most food plots are fractions of an acre, and that mismatch is where the arithmetic reliably comes apart.
The failure mode is not subtle. A half-acre plot receives a full acre's bag because the bag was open, was already in the buggy, and would not keep until next season. Take ladino clover at this page's broadcast rate of 8 lbs PLS per acre. Empty an acre's worth onto half an acre and you have applied 16 lbs per acre — double the broadcast rate and quadruple the 4-lb drilled rate. Nobody decided to do that; it happened because the bag became the unit of measurement instead of the acre.
Scaling errors also travel in a straight line. Overstate your plot by a fifth and you buy a fifth too much seed, then spread all of it on the smaller real acreage — so a fifth too much area becomes a fifth too heavy a stand. Weigh out what the calculator asks for, spread that, and keep the remainder dry and labeled for the thin spots you will find in three weeks.
Worked example: half an acre of ladino clover
Run the page's own defaults. White clover, plot size 0.5 acres, broadcast, a tag reading 95% purity and 85% germination.
- Pure live seed = 0.95 × 0.85 = 0.8075, which the result panel rounds to 81%.
- Ladino clover broadcasts at 8 lbs PLS/acre here, so half an acre calls for 4 lbs of pure live seed.
- 4 ÷ 0.8075 = 5.0 lbs of bag seed.
Switch the method to drilled and the base rate drops to 4 lbs PLS/acre: 2 lbs of pure live seed, 2 ÷ 0.8075 = 2.5 lbs out of the bag. Identical plot, identical tag, half the seed. That difference is what seed-to-soil contact is worth in money.
Why broadcast rates run higher than drilled rates
A drill sets seed at a chosen depth in a slot it has just opened and closes the slot behind it. Broadcast seed lands where it lands: on residue, in a crack, on baked crust, or out in the open where songbirds, turkeys, ants and mice work it over before the first rain arrives. A meaningful share never touches moist soil at all, and the higher broadcast rate is compensation for that share.
This page used to have to apologise for its drilled column. Published broadcast rates have always been easy to find — Alabama Extension's food-plot guide states outright that its table is a broadcast rate — but published drilled rates were scarce enough that most of the drilled figures here were an honest convention rather than a citation: take roughly a third to a half off the broadcast rate, because a drill wastes less seed.
That changed in October 2025. Mississippi State Extension's M1591, Deer Food Plot Planting Guide for the Southeast prints a table with two separate rate columns, Drill and Broadcast, for about twenty-five species. Where this page and M1591 cover the same crop the numbers line up almost exactly — ladino clover 4 and 8, red clover 10 and 15, crimson clover 15 and 25, brassicas 5 and 10, alfalfa 15 and 20, soybeans 50 and 100 are all identical, and the cereal grains sit inside its 90–100 drilled and 120–150 broadcast ranges. So the drilled column is now a published rate set for most of this page, not a rule of thumb, and the table below names the publication behind each row.
Two rows still disagree with M1591, and this page shows the disagreement rather than quietly adopting the newer number. Chicory here is 4 drilled and 5 broadcast, following Alabama's ANR-0592 and Kentucky's AGR-190; M1591 is roughly double at 5 and 10. Austrian winter peas here are 30 and 40, where the drilled 30 is M1591's own figure but the broadcast 40 is Alabama's rather than M1591's 50. When two land-grant services publish different numbers for the same seed, the useful thing to tell you is that they differ.
One split on this page is worth more money than the drilled-versus-broadcast question, and it is not a planting method at all — it is which soybean you bought. M1591 lists soybeans twice. Commercial grain-type varieties go 50 drilled and 100 broadcast. Forage and wildlife varieties — the Eagle Claw, Big Fellow, Game Changer and Quail Haven type seed sold specifically for deer plots — go 20 and 40, less than half. Those wildlife blends are also the expensive ones. Seeding a bag of forage soybeans at the grain-type rate means buying roughly two and a half times the seed you need, so pick the right one of the two soybean options above and check what is actually on your tag.
Otherwise the gap is species-specific rather than one universal multiplier, and this page's own paired numbers show the spread. Alfalfa goes 15 drilled to 20 broadcast, and the cereal grains 100 to about 120 or 130 — those are the narrow end. Ladino clover doubles from 4 to 8, brassicas from 5 to 10, soybeans from 50 to 100. Small, light seed that must be placed shallow suffers most from being thrown; heavier seed planted deeper suffers least. The calculator stores each species' broadcast figure and only falls back to a generic 1.5× when you type a custom rate it has no paired figure for.
Cultipacking closes much of that gap for very little money. Rolling a broadcast plot presses loose seed into firm contact with moist soil and gives it a chance the surface never would. If you do one thing beyond spreading, drive something heavy over small-seeded plots afterward.
Pure live seed, and why the tag beats the label
Purity is the proportion of the bag that is the species you paid for. Germination is the proportion of that seed which will actually grow. Multiply them and you have pure live seed. Two bags of the same brand, same artwork and same net weight can hold noticeably different amounts of living seed, and the only place that shows is the analysis tag attached to the bag — never the front of the sack.
Coated seed sharpens the point. Coating and inoculant add weight that is not seed, and the tag accounts for that in the purity figure, which is precisely why comparing prices by tag rather than by bag weight is the only defensible way to shop. A cheap bag with a low PLS is not cheap.
This is the same adjustment our drill calibration calculator makes from the opposite direction. There you divide a PLS target by the tag figure to find the bulk rate to set the meter for; here you divide a PLS recommendation by the tag figure to find the pounds to buy. One piece of arithmetic, two ends of the same job.
Over-seeding is the common mistake, and the expensive one
Thin stands look like failure and heavy stands look like insurance, so people round up — an extra scoop, the tail of the bag, a second pass for good measure. It is the most consistently counterproductive habit in food plotting.
Crowded seedlings compete against each other for the same water, light and nitrogen. Clover sown heavily comes up spindly and shallow-rooted, then browns off in the first dry stretch. Brassicas set small roots when they are thick, because bulb size is a function of the room each plant is given, and the bulb is much of the point. Heavy cereal stands lodge and shade out the legume seeded with them. None of this is visible at emergence, when a thick plot looks like a success.
It is also money spent twice: once at the counter, and again in the stand you did not get. A drilled clover recommendation of 4 lbs per acre leaves no room for generosity — an extra 2 lbs is a 50% error on that rate. The mistakes are asymmetric, too. A thin stand can be over-seeded next season, or frost-seeded into, or fertilized into filling out. Nothing thins a crowded stand except time and weather.
Food plot seeding rates, planted alone — and the publication behind each one
| Species | Drilled† (lb PLS/ac) | Broadcast | Plant | Depth | Published rate this row follows |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| White (ladino) clover | 4 | 8 | Spring or fall | ≤¼" | MSU P3604 publishes 8; ACES ANR-0592 publishes 4 broadcast |
| Red clover | 10 | 15 | Fall | ≤¼" | MSU P3604 and ACES ANR-0592 both publish 15 |
| Crimson clover | 15 | 25 | Late summer | ≤¼" | MSU P3604 publishes 25; ACES ANR-0592 publishes 30 |
| Brassicas | 5 | 10 | Mid–late summer | ¼" | ACES ANR-0592: turnip, rape and kale 10 broadcast, radish 12; MU G9493 drills rape at 2–6 and turnip at 3–6 |
| Chicory | 4 | 5 | Spring or fall | ¼–½" | ACES ANR-0592 publishes 5 broadcast; Mississippi State's chicory forage page and Univ. of Kentucky AGR-190 both publish 3–4 drilled for a pure stand. MSU M1591 is about double at 5 drilled / 10 broadcast — this row keeps the lower pair |
| Alfalfa | 15 | 20 | Spring or late summer | ¼–½" | MU G9493 publishes broadcast 20–25 or drill 12–15 |
| Winter wheat | 100 | ~130 | Fall | ~½–1" | MSU P3604 publishes 100–150; ACES ANR-0592 publishes 120 broadcast |
| Cereal rye | 100 | ~130 | Fall | ~½–1" | MSU P3604 publishes 100–150; ACES ANR-0592 publishes 120 broadcast |
| Oats | 100 | ~120 | Spring or fall | ~½–1" | MSU P3604 publishes 100–150; ACES ANR-0592 publishes 120 broadcast |
| Soybeans, grain type | 50 | 100 | Late spring | 1–1.5" | MSU M1591 publishes exactly 50 drilled / 100 broadcast for commercial grain varieties; MU G9493 drills 50–75 |
| Soybeans, forage/wildlife | 20 | 40 | Late spring | 1–1.5" | MSU M1591 publishes 20 drilled / 40 broadcast for wildlife soybean varieties — well under half the grain-type rate |
| Austrian winter peas | 30 | 40 | Fall | 1–2" | ACES ANR-0592 publishes 40 broadcast; MSU M1591 publishes 30 drilled / 50 broadcast. The drilled 30 is M1591's; the broadcast figure here is the lower of the two published |
† About the drilled column. It is now a published rate set for most of this table rather than a convention. MSU Extension M1591 (rev. Oct 2025) prints separate Drill and Broadcast columns, and the clovers, brassicas, alfalfa and grain-type soybeans above match its paired figures exactly, with the cereal grains inside its ranges. The drilled 30 for Austrian winter peas is also M1591's. The one row where the drilled figure is not from a paired published table is chicory, which follows Kentucky's AGR-190 pure-stand rate. If your own state extension publishes a drilled rate for your species, use theirs instead of ours.
Where these rates come from. Mississippi State Univ. Extension M1591, Deer Food Plot Planting Guide for the Southeast (rev. October 2025; the only one of these publishing a full two-column drilled-and-broadcast table, and the source of most paired figures above — note its rates assume a complete pure stand and it tells you to reduce them when mixing species). Mississippi State Univ. Extension P3604, A Cost-Production Comparison of Common Food Plot Plantings for Deer (clovers and cereal grains only — it publishes nothing at all for brassicas, chicory, winter peas, soybeans or alfalfa, so no row above credits it with those). Alabama Cooperative Extension System ANR-0592, Cool-Season Food Plots for Deer (broadcast PLS rates, including the brassicas, chicory and winter peas MSU does not cover). Univ. of Missouri Extension G9493, Enhancing White-Tailed Deer Habitats on Your Property: Food Plots (paired broadcast-and-drilled rates for a handful of species, including a drilled 50–75 for soybeans). Univ. of Kentucky AGR-190 for the chicory pure-stand rate. Where two of them disagree — crimson clover at 25 versus 30, ladino at 4 versus 8 — both figures are shown rather than averaged. Your own state's recommendations may differ again; check locally. Clovers and other small seeds should never go deeper than about ¼".
What this calculator cannot tell you
It turns a rate into a weight. It knows nothing whatever about your dirt, your calendar, or your deer, and those decide whether the plot works.
Soil test and pH. Seed is the cheap part. A test through your state or county extension office — fees are modest and vary by state — tells you the lime and fertilizer the ground actually needs. Clovers and brassicas are among the least tolerant of acidity, and on sour, unfertilized soil a perfectly calculated seeding rate still produces a disappointing plot. Lime reacts slowly, over months rather than weeks, so a test taken the season before planting is worth considerably more than one taken the week of.
Timing. Planting windows are regional and this page has no idea where you are. Sow too early and the plot matures and is grazed off before you need it; sow too late and there is not enough warmth left for establishment before dormancy. Your state extension service publishes planting-date windows by species and region, and hitting the window matters more than fine-tuning the poundage.
Browse pressure. A small plot in a place with high deer density can be eaten to bare soil before it ever establishes, and no seeding rate fixes that. What fixes it is more acreage, temporary fencing until the stand is up, or species that tolerate grazing. An exclusion cage — a few feet of wire in the middle of the plot — is the cheapest diagnostic tool you own, because it tells you at a glance whether the plot failed to grow or grew and was consumed.
Rainfall, weeds and seedbed. Small seed broadcast onto a cloddy, trashy surface in a dry spell fails at any rate. Nothing in this arithmetic accounts for moisture, competition from existing vegetation, or how well the ground was worked.
Frequently asked questions
How much seed for a ¼-acre plot? Quarter the per-acre broadcast rate: white clover ≈ 2 lbs; brassicas ≈ 2.5 lbs; winter wheat ≈ 32.5 lbs — all before the PLS adjustment, which raises each figure.
When should I plant brassicas for deer? Late summer in most of their range, early enough that leaves and bulbs are developed before hard frost sweetens them. Get the specific window from your extension service.
Can I just throw and grow? Broadcasting alone works best with tiny seed on exposed soil ahead of a rain. Expect thinner, patchier stands — that expectation is exactly what the higher broadcast rate is paying for.
Should I buy extra? A little, for edges and thin spots. Not a second bag, and not a second pass.
What is Pure Live Seed (PLS)? Pure Live Seed is the percentage of your bag that is viable seed of the species you want: purity % × germination % from the seed tag. If a recommended rate is 8 lbs PLS/acre and your bag is 80% PLS, you need 10 lbs of bag seed per acre.
Should I broadcast at a higher rate than drilling? Yes. Mississippi State Extension M1591, revised October 2025, publishes a food-plot table with separate Drill and Broadcast columns for about twenty-five species, and its paired figures are where most of this page's numbers now come from: ladino clover 4 drilled to 8 broadcast, brassicas 5 to 10, alfalfa 15 to 20, soybeans 50 to 100. The gap is species-specific rather than one universal multiplier — small, light seed that must be placed shallow suffers most from being thrown, and heavier seed planted deeper suffers least. Two rows on this page follow a different guide and say so in the table. Custom rates fall back to a generic 1.5×.