As small children, Golden Grain and Flowerbed didn’t really spend much time around other foals -Mayflower did take them with her when she was meeting with ponies in the town, and tried to set up playdates with neighbouring kids, but most found their situation quite strange and generally avoided them.
 
As slightly older children, they legally had to go to school, which forced other foals to interact with them. Sort of. Their relationship with the cows was still considered very wrong by the adults, which naturally the foals picked up on.
 
As the older one, Golden stared a few years before Flowerbed, and was bullied relentlessly. She usually dealt with it by keeping her head down and running away as soon as she could. The herd made sure all calves (and foals in this case) knew that you mustn’t ever resort to physical violence, and Golden tried to follow that. (Its because calves, especially bull-calves, are a lot stronger than they know and have sharp horns on their heads. So any reckless fighting can result in some poor calf losing an eye).
 
But then Flowerbed started. As the smaller and weaker one, the bullies quickly shifted their attention onto her. However, the first time one of them nipped at her, they were suddently slammed to the floor with a furious Golden trying to bite their ear of. She didn’t care what they did to her, but no-one messes with her sister. There were more of them though, and she lost. Badly. Still, since then she didn’t hesitate to attack them if they tried anything with Flowerbed, and would often return home with bruises, bitemarks and fractured bones, much to Mayflower’s worry. After a while of this, a few of the cows and bulls started to teach her a bit of what self defense they knew that didn’t involve “slam your head into it really hard”; if she was going to get into fights, she might as well know how to not lose them. Eventually, after a mix of learning from the bullies, the herd and by realising that she could fight dirty, she started to… not lose as badly.
 
Then one day, a neighbouring foal came over to the farm to make a delivery, and stopped for a bit to tease and nip at Flowerbed. He didn’t take into consideration that he was all alone, and thus got absolutely trampled by Golden. It caused a bit of a problem with the the neighbour, who wailed about what monsters they were to hurt her poor colt like that, and tried to stir up trouble in town. But it also marked the turning point in her fight with the other foals, and she stared to win more fights than she lost, even when they ganged up on her. It was a bit humiliating to lose to a lone foal, so while they didn’t stop the bullying fully, they kept it mostly to snide remarks and name-calling from that point on. Flowerbed even started to make friends with a few of the other foals who had been bullied, even if they were a bit scared of Golden.
 
Mayflower has very conflicted feelings about all this; whether she made the right call in taking in the foals, if she should try to move the herd somewhere else with another school, maybe try to keep the foals out of school altogether and risk the town reporting her to the guard… it got to the point where she seriously considered staying near them at all times during the day, just to keep them safe. And she can’t say that she approved of the fighting, but at the same time, none of the other parents tried to dicipline their children for the bullying even when she talked to them, so what could they do, what should she do…
 
She was just incredibly relieved when the fighting seemed to have stopped, and prayed to Celestia that her children would eventually find a place where they would feel welcomed and appreciated in. Until then, she and her herd would have to make do.