It's not at all "wierd". Thousands of small family farmers do it every day of the week. I grew up with a lot of those people...small family mixed farms where most of the brood stock had names and were treated extremely well and almost "petlike". Didn't stop them from serving Bessie's offspring as a lovely sunday roast though. I've raised my own ducks, chicken and geese from those cute fluffy babies. Loved them but also loved having that satisfaction of putting a nice chicken dinner out for my kids and knowing what went into the raising of that animal. I'm no different with my rats. We treat the breeders and the feeders very well and get a lot of satisfaction from the healthy snakes that eat the rats raised for that specific purpose.