Also to add, the tedium of shit shoveling is just a different form of tedium from box moving. I am not saying the new Brahmin stuff is bad, in fact I like it because it is helpful for the lower level people. However Brahmin shoveling has always been more annoying at least to me than box, cause the brahmin are in the way, the shit spawns behind fences and buildings, BUT this is just the standard rpg gather quest gripe. There is NO perfect gather quest that I have ever seen in any RPG it's all just different versions of tedious tasks, this one just happens to now have a better effort/reward ratio. I don't think it should be the sole topic of conversation when there is so much more in game, it's a change, it worked, and it suffers the same issues everything else in the game does, it can be exploited by bored people to the loss of new players, like anything else in game.
As far as the post that this is the worst way to do anything for newbies, I have to say I disagree, every single rpg has some mundane task to help you get a little bit of xp and Game xp under your belt. The fact that now a new character can take a few mins hit let's say NCR, get Buster's smokes, turn in Becky's debt, Shovel some shit, and be level 2 or close to it, means when they do set out into the wastes they're not completely subject to the basest skill sets, have some more hp, armor, heck even a fancy knife. Will it make or break the game, no, but it at least gives people who want to take it a chance to have a leg up. No one is forcing you at Avenger point when your character first crawls out of the hole after the storm to go shovel shit, if you don't want to, don't do it.
But let me restate I have nothing against the new changes to Brahmin, just that the changes are done, lets move on to the important stuff.