More than 18,000 cows die after a farm is involved in US fire

According to images and statements from the district sheriff's office of Castro, the firefighters rescued an employee from South Fork Milk near Dimit on Monday, as the flames went through a building and pens.

The cause of the fire was under investigation, and it was not immediately possible to contact family members who own the farm in one of the largest milk - producing circuits in Texas.

Fire prompted calls from the Institute of Animal Management (AWI), among the oldest animal protection groups in the United States, for federal laws to prevent fires in barns that kill hundreds of thousands of farm animals annually.

There are no federal regulations protecting animals from fires, and only a few countries -- Texas, not among them -- have adopted fire codes for such buildings, the Guardian reports.

The fire was the most devastating of the U.S. barns to include livestock since AWI began tracking such incidents in 2013. Some 6.5 million farm animals have died in such fires in the last decade, most of them birds.