BARMY BINT NEEDS BOOT - ACT NOW.

We have been living in fear and trepidation of telling Cactus Kate about Wednesday's Backbenches show.

It was a cringefest due to the mind bogglingly odd and inappropriate Hilary Calvert. There is nothing to commend this woman - someone has bent her social acceptability radar around her red curly bangs.

We breed chooks - for eggs and to eat. But until the moment of dispatch they live in a hen Hilton and have the run of the place. We understand that there is a need for intensively produced eggs and that there are good and bad points to all egg and broiler raising operations including free range and organic. A good battery operation is not a bad in the scheme of things - a bad one is well pardon the pun - fowl. We have seen both.

Calvert was crass, arrogant and just plain scary as she went on and on about chickens and cages and killing them.

But after Backbenches last night there is only one chook who should be looked up in a cage and its Hillary Calvert - and frankly it wold be no loss if someone chopped her head off as there appears to be little in it anyway.

-Now back to Cactus - as we said we didnt know how to tell her that yet another ACT member was shaping up to be a dud.

We didnt need to worry - she watched the show online and if you think I'm disgusted - read her comments.

We dont think Hilary Calvert will make the cut on the ACT list. And we dont think that will ruffle many feathers - apart from the headless Gallus herself.

DOGS OF THE BIG DEEP

We have come into contact with many amazing animals in our lifetime but few have had an impact on us as great as both Sealions and Sea leopards.

We live with sea lions on a daily basis on the muttonbird islands and they really are the dogs of the sea and we mean that in a good way. They are intelligent, beguiling, graceful and have a primitive sense of what we believe is humour.

Sea leopards are light years more advanced than sea lions. However they are also considerably more aggressive.

Sealions are like border collies to the Sealeopards huskies.

It is hard to watch a video of some silly, silly young men who on seeing a very, very sick sea leopard decided to pelt it with rocks. Think a wounded dog lying in the street. Its the same - in fact the leopard is probably much more intelligent.

So instead of calling DOC or alerting some one who could either treat the obviously very ill leopard or put the animal out of its misery, the youths decided to torture it.

It is sick.

The criminals deserved much worse than a sentence of 4 months.

Below is some footage which we believe is one of the best examples of how these animals think. It is raw, its powerful and it shows the intellectual depth of these great creatures.

In his own primal way he is giving a gift.

He doesn't harm the penguin. He even takes it up for air. But he wants to give it to the camera man -extraordinary.

DONT SQUASH THIS BUG

There has been an increased debate around animal welfare in the past few years and its all good. Apart from one species. The Crayfish. When you come from a fishing family thats been in the business for 6 generations in New Zealand, you can become anaethetised to killing fish.

Our crayfish or rock lobsters, normally came home in a sack , were chucked in the cool of the wash house tub and then the water of a big mush pot was ready for them when it reached a rolling boil. You quickly dumped them in and jammed the lid on quick as they didn't seem to like the hot water very much.

And in the days of tailing at sea - the body was severed from the head. Probably the worst way to kill them as the bodies remained active for quite some time.

As knowledge increased iki-ing became the done thing. A slice into the body that basically munched the very small brain. Then into boiling water.

So all good - And we see that the BSA has not upheld a complaint that came out of Master chef when a young aspiring chef dunked her cray into boiling water to kill it.

And frankly if its been chilled down long enough and the water is on a good rolling boil - there is little movement from the crayfish.

Now, we iki most fish these days- it stops them wriggling and means you get less spikes in your hands and it has the added benefit of them dying very quickly.

But occasionally we need a reality check - you see the crayfish has quite a close terrestial relative.

And we wonder just who among animal activists is going to go into bat for the extremely common slater or wood lice.

So why should the crayfish warrant more sympathy than a slater?

Personally we tend to ignore slaters, irritating and frikking ugly they may be but they are pretty harmless. And they tend to turn bad shit into good shit.

However if they really annoy us we just squash them - sort of a mega iki.

Works fine for us.

And for the record - one of the most viewed blogs on roarprawn, its about crayfish how to cook it and eat it naked.

And the best wine to go with crayfish?? That simple - any damn fine champagne will do especially the great NZ bubbles we have on offer these days - like the Le Brun Number 1

THANK GOODNESS

We are delighted to see that the appalling Crafar farms are in the hands of the receivers.

The whole country has been disgusted at the welfare issues surrounding this operation which were brought to the attention of the nation by the blogger journalists Brian Spondre and Bernard Hickey.

However, we are even more appalled that the socialists over at Red Alert reckon that the Crafar farms be sorted out by Landcorp. Now as much as we have much admiration for the stirling management of Landcorp by Chris Kelly, its a bloody stupid idea.

Although we love this line :

Jim Sutton the Chair and Chris Kelly the CEO are both drier than a Hawkes Bay drought but in the end pragmatic and very good at hard negotiations.

It shows that an acute lack of understanding of the business dynamic. The farms need to be sold on the open market and the receiver will undoubtedly work out if they are better kept as one operation or sold as individual lots.

Good farmers will ensure good practices are put in place and restore the farms to high producing sustainable farms. Its simple really, as good farm practices ultimately mean better returns.

There is no benefit in Landcorp being involved. Just in case you haven't noticed Trevor , the Nanny days are over .