I'd guess the strung up yotes serve a primarily talismanic function (think crosses and vampires or kissing one's `lucky' thumb knuckle as the lottery numbers are called). As I read this thread I started imagining some grizzled rancher singing Tom Petty's Don't Come Around Here No More as he strings the yote to the barbed wire.
My folks would pack up my brothers and I, every two years, to make the run on old 66 from San Berdoo to Tulsa (on the way to TN. to see ma's folks). One of the games we would play was counting the number of strung up yotes. What did that experience teach me? Don't mess with other folk's sheep.
Well, Old 66 ain't nothin' but too many lanes of nothin' these days and whatever magic once resided in those windblown corpses along the two-lane has long since disappeared.
Feed those yotes to the Turkey Vultures RECYCLE!
(still trying to figure out why Charlton Heston was so upset when he discovered that Soylent Green was People??? Waste not, want not).