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North Central Kansas | I have built some fence commercially, and I'll offer a few points. Ben makes good points on his post.
Barb wire is a physical barrier so it must be stout. Corners must be minimum 4 feet deep, and I mean the brace post also. I've come to the conclusion that barb wire must be pulled about an eighth of a mile to stay tight. If you start getting under 500 feet on one pull, the chances of it staying tight for many years begins to drop by the foot.
Barb wire as a hot wire is a bad idea for a couple reasons. The barbs won't slip through insulators so you tear up insulators and move posts around, and if an animal gets caught up in an electrified barb wire they will be severely injured. We did a job this summer where a guy had a single temporary cheap hot wire around a pen where he fed calves. He wanted barbwire with one hot. It was a rectangle shaped pen with the ends about 200 feet long. I told him the long sides should stay tight, the ends will be tight when I leave but I'll guarantee you the end will not stay tight like the sides. I used barbless or Horse cable for the hot wire so it could be maintained.
If you have a small pasture or just alot of fence per acre, I think the high tensile and the composite posts are a good idea. Electric fence is a psychological barrier so it must be make a good impression on the livestock. The New Zealand boys say you Americans over build and under power your fence. However we do need to make this psychological barrier more reliable and I see alot of promise in the new products available today. If an animal is walking through a multi-wire high tensile electric fence then there is a power or ground problem. Call Kencove or some place that knows electric fence systems.
This is one of those questions where the biggest limitation is between your ears. I've seen people use a temporary hot wire inside old barbwire for more than 10 years, but if you try to talk to them about a permanent more reliable electric fence they won't even listen.
Five strand barb wire is good, don't get me wrong, if built right. It has gotten rather expensive and it has some limitations.
I've stretched up the Oklahoma brand that Orscheln sells and it seemed to stretch good. Barbwire is such a long term material that I'll have to wait many years to see if it stands the test of time. But it acted fine as I pulled it tight, and I pull with a dual action come-a-long.
I'll be trying alot of high tensile on my farm in the future.
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hi-tensile or barbed
