By the time an old retired breeder dies naturally hon it's either developed a cancer or just faded away. Neither of which makes for a quality meal for any snake in my opinion.

We also retire our older breeders as a bit of a thank you for all their contributions to our snake collection. They still have a job as they hang out with rats of their same sex, either with future breeders growing up or with the feeder rats. The mature rats tend to keep the younger ones in line and break up any scuffles so they can still be a use in the colony and have some companionship (rats are highly social and hate to be caged alone).

I avoid a lot of contact with our feeder rats. They get checked daily of course, watered, fed, a quick hands on check when I clean enclosures and of course, checked over before being fed off. Other than that I don't touch them so I don't get bonded to them much. The breeders on the other hand all have names and get petted a bit and occasionally come out for a play (not a lot, they are after all breeders and usually busy with their rat lives LOL). At first it was hard for me to feed off fuzzies as for me that's the cutest stage but now I'm fine with it.

I just remember that I'm only a cog in the wheel of a very natural process. Rats are born to feed snakes, snakes are hatched to eat rodents - so when all is said and done, my human emotions aren't really needed in that process.