Just another day at the ponydairy
A large bowl of oatmeal, eggs, peanut butter toast with cinnamon and sugar, two oranges and a big glass of milk. The day started for Milkweed the same way it always did, with a big, hearty breakfast befitting his calorie consuming lifestyle. With a rinse down of the milk and a washing of the dishes, the healthy green stallion put on his capotain hat and trotted out the door.
Dressed in his simple denim overalls and a white work shirt, he left the small porch of his rural, robin's egg blue farmhouse home and began the long trek towards the big, red and white barn. Unusually sized, for such a small time farm. His leisurely trotting down the well trod dirt path between his home and the livestock interrupted only by passing glances towards his crops to either side. The small greenhouses, set side by side, showing their healthy products of the season.
These medicinal crops were sought after all across Equestria and beyond for their restorative properties. They had to grow somewhere. And boy, did they grow well near or in the Everfree Forest. It never seemed to get old, like a favorite song. Season after season, watching the vine products creep, the fruit bear and the seeds riden. The weather would start to get cool, soon. The harvest time approached. Everything from tinctures to prevent petrification via cockatrice, to warding off curses would be manufacturable and stocked, for a rainy day.
But he was not out to work in the fields, today. Breezing passed the beautiful stretches of crops and green houses, all specialty purposed for their product, he instead made his way to the side door and opened it up with a smooth, silent pull of the oiled hinges, making his way into his dairy barn.
This was not a normal dairy.
The summer crowd had mostly packed up and left. Waiting for him as he stepped through the foyer of hanging coats, hats, footwear and up the steps, was a cafeteria. The smells of much the same thing he ate at home filled the air, produced and delivered from much bigger pots, ovens and toasters. Heavy on the oats and cream, with more sweet things like pies and a little cake on the dessert table.
The mares that were present were quite engaged in chattery. Less than a dozen total, but they were the year-round crew. The full time weeders, waterers, cooks and cleaners of the dairy stable. Well fed, to a mare. And each and every one of them, whether they sported conservative dress or went natural as the day they were born, had another designation.
Dairymare.
"Morning, ladies." Milkweed called, trotting on by. He received a high voiced bark of greetings in return. "Everything fine and dandy in here?" He smiled, gazing around at the multitude of colorful faces. Some were locals, others were pilgrims from as far away as Cloudsdale, Appaloosa and Trottingham. There was only the three breeds among them; of the other varieties of pony, none on the staff counted crystal among them. Maybe the coming winter, or the year after.
"Sunflower Smooth's shower was clogged this morning, but Plumbus Trap fixed it." Said a lilac mare, fresh faced to the crew. Her first summer away from home as a grown mare. "Oh, the sink in my room doesn't leak anymore. Also her work."
"Hah," Mused Milkweed. Every so often, he got a mare with some trade and technical skills. It was a load off his mind. "Glad to hear it. One less thing for me to fix."
"Miss Five hasn't come out of her room yet this morning." Said another mare, moving a spoon full of yoghurt into her mouth. A spring orange coat, her messy morning mane hidden under a floral bonnet. "I do hope she's alright."
Of course. Milkmare #00000005. Or, as they called her, Miss Five. A somewhat secretive, shy mare.
None of the other mares really knew all that much about her. She was one of those less social mares, that preferred solitude and anonymity. Most mares took this occupation as an opportunity to make friends, network and hobnob with ponies from near and far. Ms. Five was a mystery to the rest of them.
You see, a pony dairy isn't exactly what one would call, 'orthodox.' The nature of the work and the intimacy of the craft, no matter how natural, could be embarrassing for some mares. Packing up and disappearing for whole seasons at a time, some mares just pawned it off as taking a nice, long vacation, or subsuming into their jobs. Some went so far as to use pseudonyms, when working at the dairy. Others went so far as to cover themselves. Their cutiemarks, their manes, some even their whole bodies, if they did not want any to recognize them. It was purely their choice.
Some took it a step further. Even foregoing an equinizing pseudonym, a nickname to replace their real one, some, whether it was for their own fantasies of being anonymous, milk producing feral livestock, or simply to have the most rudimentary form of ID imaginable, went by their numbered designation. The number assigned to them, in the order of their entry into the dairy. It was usually a number reserved solely for administrative staff- Milkweed, himself. But, if they insisted..
Ms. Five was one of those kinds of mares. She was never spotted without her dour, plain garments of a single color. Nopony had ever seen her in the communal baths or shower; they had no idea what her cutiemark was supposed to look like. Under her hat and mane, nopony even knew if she was an earth pony, a unicorn or a pegasus. All they ever saw of her was a nondescript feminine shape in line for breakfast, that had become increasingly rounder and softer as the months to year had gone by. If the mares really thought about it, none of them could even remember hearing her voice or listening to her speak.
"Oh, she's fine." Milkweed waved a forehoof dismissively, snorting and smiling as he trotted by the big table of long termers. "But thank you girls for caring. She takes her identity very seriously, is all. She's probably just overslept."
With that, Milkweed set out to gather up a breakfast platter for her. Assembling the mighty quantity needed for a dairymare, he pushed it with his chest and nose, going down the long hallway going down the middle of the long dairy stable with his cargo. An incredible span of distance, with doors and apartments on either side. Less like a conventional dairy or stable, and more like some sort of dormitory.
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Knock knock knock.
Milkweed sat outside the door patiently, ears perked and listening intently for signs of life from the mare's room. Much like her assigned number, room #5. Same room she'd occupied for the last year. But as he pondered, Milkweed realized that she had been getting up later and later every day. Sometimes shuffling out the door, only behind schedule a few seconds. Sometimes, a few minutes. And under his nose, it'd become regular for her to come shuffling out hours after everypony else had eaten.
At least she WAS eating. That much, he was certain. No mare produced as much milk as she did without compensating for the calories and nourishment lost.
The door opened with a well oiled quiet. The dark of the room met him, followed by the blue hide of her body. A lidded eye peeked out at him, still bleary from sleep. Her face pudgy, her mane at least straight and dark. Upon seeing it was just her employer, she grunted and stepped away, opening up the door.
"Good morning, Five!" Milkweed chipperly said, as Ms. Five moaned through her nose and rubbed the bridge of her snout with a hoof. The curtains were closed, darker and thicker replacements from the flimsy, light colored things that'd come standard with the room. Stepping into her abode was like walking into a film development dark room.
Lighting his horn with that soft, honey gold colored magic, Milkweed lit the overhead light and shut her door behind him. Just in case any looky-loos tried to sneak a peek at the mysterious, secretive mare.
Ms. Five, by what Milkweed could see, had indeed grown quite portly. When she arrived, she was a somewhat lithe little thing. A nerdy, bookish, bespectacled wisp of a mare. That had changed. The mare that spread before him now was substantially more massive than that.
To start, her teats. Most dairymares that took up the occupation, the induced lactation, the changes in diet, gained a little girth to their teats as though they were nursing foals. Ms. Five blew straight passed that and had become enormous. Even now, her great mammaries swelled out beneath her. If she stood, her darker blue, borderline black nipples skirted the carpeted floor beneath her, dangling like a dual cow's udder. It forced a pronounced waddly gait and small steps. The fact she still lacked a bra to go anywhere probably wasn't helping her room boundedness much.
But not just her teats. Her whole body seemed to weigh heavily from the effects of her sedentary lifestyle and generous helpings. Her belly was too soft to appear pregnant, but due to the minimal amount of rolls or creases, it gave that impression. In proportion with her widened, heavier flanks and chubby cheeks. The only anaerobic activity she got was carting her own slightly obese body around, these days.
Sliding her breakfast cart in front of her, he sat down on the opposite side. With an apathetic expression that was all business, Ms. Five levitated a spoon up with her magic and began to modestly eat. She had a decent appetite- a perfect one, in fact. But she was no glutton. Just a little chunky.
Milkeed's honeygold magic lit up, as he took her pulse at the neck. A normal checkup, Ms. Five understood. He'd done it before. It was the nature of their relationship, when one employed their body as the source of the product and the labor. In its own way, this was a demanding physical career.
"Have you been feeling well lately, dear?" Milkweed asked, his rural Noreast Manehatten Trottinghammer accent.
"Yes. Why?" Five replied, between swallows of breakfast.
"I've been noticing lately that you've, ah..." Looking her in her brown eyes. She did not have a particularly standoffish expression, but one close enough where he grew concerned. He was talking about a mare's bodyweight. That was never a winning proposition. In her demeanor, however, he detected only as dour and deadpan. Not scouring, not daring him to say anything he knew he shouldn't say.
"As your physician on this farm, I have to say you've gained a bit of weight." He started. Five mildly winced, but it was more the sting of biting ones own cheek than having been slapped by somepony.
"I was thinking you'd say that." Five replied with a mutter, slowing her consumption of her meal.
As they spoke, Milkweed gazed down. The tiny white spots on her dark blue-black teats were an obvious sign that she hadn't been drained this morning yet, either. Illuminating his horn, he pulled over the half moon shaped suction pumps from their mount in the wall, tenderly affixing them over her teats as she ate. The big, fat nursing nubs plumped up inside of the translucent glass and silicone nipple shields, sinking against the blue breasts. A regimen Five was so used to she barely did more than wince an eye and groan through her nose at between bites.
"The good news is, I did the mental math. Assuming you aren't sneaking extra rations of breakfast, lunch or dinner?" Milkweed said, studying her expression. Five was not a good liar. And she had never done so, as far as he reckoned.
"No," Five said, deadpan. "I eat what is served to me for my production. That's it." Some mares were less believable when they said things like that. Not Five. Whether a personality quirk or discipline was difficult to say, but she wasn't a liar.
As they spoke, the pumps and tubes connected to the machines embedded in the walls silently worked away. Warm, sweet, off-white maremilk began to flow down through the long tubes. The asynchronous pumping making each fat mare teat puff and shrink, taking turns. One after the other, as numerous ducts geysered their lactic bounty into the shaped shielding.
Milkweed smiled in admiration. She really was an ideal dairymare. Productive, cooperative. And with quirks that made her a mare of her own.
"Then this extra stuff," He said, emphasizing her belly as he gave the big wall of blue chub a poke with his forehoof, sinking into the soft cookie dough, "Will go away with some exercise." To which, Ms. Five grunted as much to being prodded and squished as she did the prospect of all that unwanted activity.
"Do I have to?" She asked. Less the juvenile, pleading way. Milkweed realized it was more akin to asking if it was part of the job.
"I'm afraid so, dear. I'd be neglecting your needs as a dairymare to let you sit in here, out of the sunlight." Reaching that forehoof down, resting it on her large marebreasts. They had truly grown massive, compared to the barely noticable little nubs darker than the rest of her fur that they started as. They weren't unreal, but very improbable. It must've been something in the blood.
Ms. Five grumbled. Grumbled, but already made peace with the fact this was her job. If exercise was part of it, if only to maintain body weight and metabolism, then that was part of it. "Fiiiiine." For the money and room and board she was receiving, she'd tolerate it. "So what are we going to do about it?"
At this. Milkweed brightened up. "I was thinking a few walks around the farmstead, every day. Just to use the extra calories and get the blood pumping through your legs."
"The. whole. farm?" Ms. Five asked. Even with her deadpan, detatched-seeming demeanor, there was just the tiniest hint of a disappointed filly.
"The whole farm, dear." Milkweed affirmed. "After each milking and meal. But you don't have to do the whole thing at once.." His forehoof lowering down, giving her thigh a squeeze. An action that had her grunt and wiggle shyly away from his squeezy touch. "You've kind of been off your hooves for almost a year. Putting on foalweight for a foal that doesn't exist. Expecting a whole lap around the farm might leave you more hurt than helped, right now. So just do what you can each meal, and that will be good enough."
Ms. Five nodded, licking the spoon one final time as she finished her dinner with a sigh. The morning was going to suck.
Tipping his hat, he smiled and turned, starting to trot towards her door. "I'll walk it with you when I see you on the field." He encouraged. Opening the door, he saw himself out. He had other mares to get to today.
True to his word, Milkweed made his rounds. With his other employees, as well as keeping his word to walk with Ms. Five. And though she remained rather pudgy, proportional to the extra and excess mammary of a very, very productive mare, she didn't gain any more. Even as production increased, just a little.
