KEY POINTS:
A hay contractor lost more than half his supplies after a suspicious fire destroyed a large barn near Feilding today.
Firefighters have been unable to put out the fire at the 50m by 30m site and said they would let it burn itself out, a process likely to take a couple of days.
The Fire Service was alerted to the incident at Reid Line West, north east of Feilding, at 2.15am.
Appliances were sent from Feilding and Halcombe and water tankers brought out from Palmerston North and Linton army base.
Feilding deputy chief fire officer Graeme Spiers said hay fires were "almost impossible" to put out once they got going and an added complication this morning was the lack of water in the area.
He said fire safety officers were investigating and the incident was being treated as suspicious.
"We've not ruled out arson."
The barn was the property of DB Contracting and owner Duncan Baker said he was "pretty gutted" at what had happened.
"That's at least 50 per cent of our stock and most of it was pre-organised to go to clients," he said.
"It's going to be pretty tough. We've got a lot of farmers who were banking on this feed."
- NZPA
