Fire crews from five stations were called to a barn fire north of Shakespeare late Friday morning.
When they arrived, they found the Road 108 barn engulfed in flames.
“It was a defensive attack right from the time the first crews arrived on scene,” Perth East fire chief Bill Hunter told CTV News.
Kurtis Moesker had been working near the milking barn – at his Shylane Holsteins business – when he first spotted the fire.
“I looked up, and I saw the barn roof was black and there was lots of smoke,” he said.
Immediately, Moesker and the handful of other people at the farm turned their attention to getting cattle to safety.
All the animals were saved, although a significant amount of equipment was lost to the flames.
Moesker estimated the total value of the barn and its equipment as between $1 million and $1.5 million.
Firefighters battled shifting winds as they worked to ensure the flames didn’t spread to a second barn on the same property.
Six tanker trucks shuttled water to the site from a pond at a nearby gravel pit.
The normal operations of Shylane Holsteins will be able to continue until the barn is rebuilt, thanks to a neighbour’s new barn that was offered to the company as a temporary home.
“We’re able to fit all 80 cows in that barn and milk them over there,” Moesker said.
The Office of the Fire Marshal has been called in to help investigate the cause of the fire.
