Looks OK although I wonder about having that bit of fence in the bottom right corner. Do you find it to be a distraction?
A slight crop would remove it. Possibly a mix of crop and clone.
Not sure how much of a distraction it is, but now that you mention it, I would like to see the bottom photo without the fence. Removing the fence and the tag on the cow's ear would remove all traces of human involvement in the image. Which is kind of cool. I don't think I would crop. Can the fence be removed with content awareness? I will have to look into that. Thank you for your comment, Geoff.
The main distractions for me are the out-of-focus hanging branches top and left, and also the fence. Regarding the images as shot, I prefer the first - it is better as it excludes the sky, and the mid-ground animal is taking an interest in the two in the foreground. However, it does need a crop - to remove both the fence and the out-of-focus hanging branches on the left.
Philip
Thank you, Philip, for your helpful comment. I was driving on a country dirt road when I saw the cows approaching the water. I stopped, got out, and quickly took the first shot. I saw the hanging branch and fence and promptly moved over to take the branch and fence out of the scene. I couldn't remove the fence entirely for the second shot. What I find interesting is that I wasn't sure if I should crop out the fence when its exclusion from the second shot was my intention.
+1 to the comments about the fence.
I find that taking pictures of very dark animals on bright days is challenging as the dark shadows are almost textureless. I find that the bright field behind the two front cows is somewhat distracting, again a product of the light not being great for photography.
Looks good to me.