In Catholic Europe it was culturally enforced apart from exceptional situations (like you have to harvest your grain and rain is coming). Sabbath literally means "Saturday" in many central-European languages, so celebrating on Sundays had no Jewish associations. In fact it was the opposite because Jews didn't observed Sundays, so you could be called "a Jew" for not observing Catholic holidays including Sundays.

Feeding animals didn't counted as work, just like nowadays people don't think cooking for your family or brushing your teeth is work.