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Felt like drawing a few of my other OC's who isn't part of my next-gen 'verse. This is Mama Mayflower with her two adoptive foals Golden Grain and Flowerbed. Their story takes place just after the banishment of Nightmare Moon (about ~950 years before the start of the show), so Equestria is a bit different in their time, but not incredibly so (I imagine having an immortal rules tends to stagnate culture a bit).

The reason they ended up with Mayflower, was because their parents owned a wheat and dairy farm. In my headcanon, cows are basically employed by farms; given food and housing in exchange for their milk, which they can basically produce whenver they wish thanks to magic. Because the implication of having sapient beings as cattle is a bit… too slavery for me to want to think of Applejack doing it. So, no, their magic allows them to make milk, which they trade to ponies for money/house and board.

Anyway, after giving birth to Flowerbed, their mother dies, leaving their father grief-stricken and in need of food for a newborn foal. He already had a herd of cows living on his farm, so he asked one of them to act as her wet nurse. Since he was now working alone on the farm, and because he was severly depressed from losing his wife, Mayflower practically raised the two fillies alone for a couple of years. Then, tragedy struck again, as their father died from a heart-attack while out working. The ponies from the nearby village came to help with the funeral, and tried to take the foals away to bring them to an extended family member who lived in another village. But Golden Grain refused to go -leaving everything she'd ever known and the only parent she had left to go live with people she didn't know? Yeah, no thanks, and anyone who tried to force her or touch her little sister she'd bite until she drew blood. Flowerbed didn't quite understand, but didn't want to leave Mayflower's side, and just copied her big sister in biting any ponies who came close. Meanwhile, Mayflower gathered the rest of her herd, and used their bigger bulk to get between the ponies and foals, saying that the if the they didn't want to leave, then they could stay with her.

As I said, this was a long time ago, and at that point, child-protection/child-labor/etc laws and such didn't really exist or weren't enforced as strictly as they are in the time the show takes place. So, since they were the only heirs to their father, technically Golden Grain was now the owner of the farm. Therefore, the towns-ponies just cursed out the "ungrateful brats" and "traitorus cattle" and said that fine, stay there until your farm is so broken down and you get so hungry you have to come to us for help.

Mayflower did really love her adoptive daughers, and convinced the rest of her herd to help her in taking care of them. They didn't quite get it, but in cow herds it's one for all, all for one, so they all pitched in to help keep the farm going, rather than getting a milk-contract somewhere else. So it was one of the very few cow-run farms in equestria. (At that point, almost all farming was done by earth ponies, due to cultural expectations) The town finds all of this very confusing and wrong and tends to avoid them outside of buying and selling to them. Profit is stronger than disgust, I guess.

After the sisters grow up and realise that neither of them has a talent for farming, the farm is gifted to their adoptive cousin. He turns out to be really good at running a farm, so it grows and continues to be run by cows and bulls for several generations.

Right now in this scenario though, their aformentioned adoptive cousin, named Stronghorn, is very interested in getting Golden Grain to play with him. She's not entirely sure though, and has be promised by Mayflower that he won't headbutt her. (This is the reason he's wearing balls of felted wool -calves like to headbutt, and the parents don't want them to accidentally gouge each other's eyes out.)

Upvotes at import: 32 | Stars at import: 22
Posted previously at: 2018-08-08T21:37:01 | Posted previously by: Mildgyth