DeSoto ? A fire destroyed a feed mill early Friday morning at De Soto Feed and Grain.

As the building’s remains smoldered behind him late Friday morning, De Soto Feed and Grain manager Dean Heise said the mill would be rebuilt. The feed mill, built in the 1910s on Hadley Street near the Kansas River, housed the business’ custom feed mixing operation, he said.

“Our custom, local mixing is shut down indefinitely,” he said. “It’s not all of our business, but it’s a big part of it.

“We have customers with one guinea pig to a guy with 250 breed cows.”

Heise said he got a 4 a.m. call at his home in rural Lawrence informing him of the fire.

“When I drove over the bridge, I saw the roof was already starting to collapse,” he said. “It was fully engulfed when I got here. It was past the point of being salvaged. It was just a matter of containing it.”

De Soto Fire Department Chief Kevin Ritter said the same assessment was made when the first units from his department arrived four minutes after a patrolling Johnson County Sheriff’s officer reported flames jumping through the structure’s roof at 3:50 a.m.

“We went into defensive attack to protect nearby exposures,” he said.

Three neighboring fire departments helped fight the blaze, including ladder trucks from the Olathe and Lenexa fire departments. The fire was brought under control after 20 minutes and units stayed on the scene until 8:30 a.m., Ritter said.

The cause of the fire had yet to be determined, Ritter said.

Heise said the loss was substantial.

“There were thousands of bushels of grain and many tons of pre-mixed feed lost,” he said. “It had to be (worth) several $100,000.

“And,” he added, “hundred-year-old buildings are hard to replace.”