Multiple area departments responded early Friday morning to a fire at a hog farm in the 8300 block of LL Road just north of Red Bud in rural Monroe County.

The blaze was at Cedar Ridge Farms, a swine seedstock operation owned and operated by Freddie and Mike Grohmann and their brothers. Per its website, Cedar Ridge has approximately 2,000 breeding sows, 100 herd boars, farms 1,200 acres and is known for its purebred swine genetics.

Freddie and Mike said a hog building caught fire shortly after midnight, resulting in substantial damage to the structure as well as the loss of several animals.

The brothers said the cause of the fire and cost of damages and losses are not yet known, though things could have been a lot worse.

“It was actually very fortunate,” Freddie told the Republic-Times. “There were a lot of empty pens in that area, and one of the barns was completely empty, and the other one had some butchers that were ready for market and a lot of them were sent out of there already. And we had a lot of good help that we were able to save the ones that were in that barn with minimal loss.”

Responding agencies included the Red Bud, Hecker, New Athens, Baldwin and Waterloo fire departments.