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I understood that the labels were brand names, but I thought the article was saying that the ranchers deliberately used different brands of barb wire because it

• bluGill 2y ago
  Ranchers go to the local store and buy whatever barb wire is in stock. Whatever the owner of the store buys is what they get. There may be more than one store, the store may order from different manufactures, and the store may have more than one type in stock (with different marketing trying to convince you one is better than the other) - but in the end it is all what the store has in stock. I'm going to count the local Sears catalog (and others) as a local store for this discussion. The important key is farmers don't consult with others to be intentionally different. (farmers will consult with each other but that is only to see what works for someone else to copy it - if a farmer has barbed wire that doesn't work they will replace it and tell the neighbors). They all have the same set of choices to work with. Farmers also have no reason to care if their fence is different. They know where their land is (and often are leasing land that someone else built the fence). Barbed wire isn't something that a dishonest farmer would steel - it gets harder to work with after it has been put up once so a fresh roll is better.