The cause of a barn fire near Hensall that killed 1,000 pigs will remain undetermined.

“We’ll never determine what it is,” Bluewater Acting Fire Chief Dave Renner said on Saturday, the day after a barn on Fansville Line was destroyed by fire.

“There’s not much left to even look at. (Undetermined) that’s what we’ll class it as.”

Emergency responders received the call just after 9:15 a.m. The barn was engulfed in flames when they arrived and was levelled by noon.

Officials say the owner was on site at the time of the fire, and found the barn full of smoke when he came out of his office, which was also located in the barn.

At that point there was nothing he could do to deal with the fire and he exited the building.

The barn housed a mix of about 300 sows and 700 weaner pigs, all of which died in the fire.

The fire is the latest in a series of fires in southwestern Ontario since the beginning of January, starting with a high-profile stable fire near Guelph that killed more than 40 racehorses.