A Decade of Care: CLS Celebrates 10 Years

Ten years ago this month, Tyson and Anna Strickland walked down the aisle. A week later, he walked across the stage to accept his Doctor of Veterinary Medicine degree. By the time May 2016 ended, he was a husband, a veterinarian and a business owner, plowing ahead on not much more than ambition and prayer.

Starting a large animal-only vet clinic, fresh out of school? People told him he was crazy.

But a decade later, Dr. Tyson Strickland, DVM, is a husband, father, veterinarian and entrepreneur, continuing to prove the naysayers wrong every step of the way.

Dr. Tyson Strickland, DVM, and wife Anna before the 2024 Comer Christmas parade, during which Anna served as grand marshal.

“I don’t think when I went into vet school I intended to start my own business. As I got into my third and fourth year, what I realized is there weren’t job opportunities if I wanted to stay in Georgia to do what I was looking to do, which was production livestock medicine,” Dr. Strickland says. “I had some great externships my senior year and got to see some really great business models in other parts of the country. I thought it would work well here, we just had to build it, because it didn’t really exist in the concept that I had in mind.”

He pieced together what is now Custom Livestock Solutions from clinics that offered production management, farm consulting and veterinary care.

“I was fortunate enough to have a wife that was willing to support me and give me the opportunity to go chase that dream,” Dr. Strickland says. “We were living on love and broke and had nothing but dreams and opportunity ahead of us.”

This was not the plan, Anna Strickland recalls. The plan was to get married, move to south Georgia, eventually purchase a mostly small animal practice, then perhaps incorporate large animal medicine.

“We were very much thinking we were gonna be in south Georgia,” she says. “But God had a hand in all of that, because right about while we were engaged, right about the time that he called and said, ‘Hey, this is what I wanna do,’ literally that week I got a dream job offer to come back to northeast Georgia.”

The stars were aligning, but both Stricklands say looking back, they were probably a little naïve about the risk they were about to take. CLS started on the shelves of their rental house in Winterville, Georgia, where they had to fend off a cat that liked to knock product on the floor, and forewent television so they had a place to store equipment.

“I trusted him. We just had no idea what would happen,” Anna Strickland says. “I knew that’s what he wanted to do, and I was excited to see him do it.”

She remembers his first call: an emergency dystocia case in Madison, Georgia, where a farmer needed help pulling a calf. Dr. Strickland swallowed his nerves, went out in his half-stocked vet truck, got the calf out, came home, washed his hands, and that was it.

Custom Livestock Solutions was in business.

Dr. Strickland washes his hands after his first call as owner of Custom Livestock Solutions in 2016.

Championing the Mission

Chandler Akins, owner-operator of Bar A Ranch in Nashville, Georgia, knew Strickland while the two were at the University of Georgia and heard about the idea for CLS in its early stages.

“I thought the concept was an innovative and much needed one in our part of Georgia where at the time, and still currently, large animal vets are hard to find,” he says.

Family friendships aside, what keeps Akins’ professional relationship with CLS is the vet team’s customer service, response time, and availability to travel. CLS visits Bar A Ranch for herdwork, including breeding soundness exams before The Source Bull Sale each year.

“The vision was herd health and production livestock management. Really being forward-thinking and working with progressive-minded producers is what we were targeting,” Dr. Strickland says. “I really wanted to work with people who thought of their cattle operation as a business.”

This approach was somewhat novel to Madison County, where the Stricklands moved in 2017.

Jill Parham, president and chief executive officer of the Madison County Chamber of Commerce, is a lifelong Madison County resident who has always been involved in agriculture to some degree. She recalls how challenging it was for her grandfather to find large animal veterinarians for his cattle, outside of emergency situations. She says having herd management and herd health introduced to the area on the scale Dr. Strickland did was a boon for livestock producers.

“The impact to me that it has made on agriculture is a recognition of the importance of the proactive rather than reactive,” she says. “These ag producers are able to produce a product that they’re truly proud of, that they really understand he science behind how it became what it is. It also allows them to have so much more efficiency. Their calves are all dropping at the same time. They’re able to plan their life a little better. My granddaddy’s cows were having calves just whenever. I mean, I didn’t know it could be done any other way.”

Dialing in the Vision

Dr. Strickland says everything CLS did, and does, hinges on driving profitability into a livestock operation. Back in its early days, he went full boots on the ground. He showed up to every Georgia Cattlemen’s Association chapter meeting he could, attended livestock shows to get his name out there and drum up work, and started putting every spare penny that wasn’t allotted to student loans or bills right back into the business. He even picked up a few days a month working at Comer Veterinary Hospital, which later got added to his own business portfolio when he purchased it in 2018 from the late Dr. Leslie Fordham, DVM.

“I was pretty nervous those first six months,” Dr. Strickland says. “But then we got into winter and kind of got into more of the production season as far as breeding and breeding soundness exams on bulls. Then, getting in the springtime and herdwork, it really started snowballing after a year. I’d say late spring, early summer that next year, I felt like we were getting some traction.”

By winter 2017, Strickland was ready to hire his first associate veterinarian. Dr. Ben Scott, DVM, remained with CLS until moving to Oklahoma in 2024.

Bar A Ranch owner-operator Chandler Akins, right, watches as the CLS veterinary team works cattle in its third year of operation.

It’s the “unbelievable champions” of producers, agricultural experts, fellow vets and industry partners whom the Stricklands give credit to for helping get CLS off the ground.

“Just a lot of really great people who were taking time away from their days, taking a chance on him, promoting him so that he could build this business and then grow the team; that was just absolutely never, ever in our wildest dreams,” Anna Strickland says. “It was surreal thinking about how many different people took a chance on him, continue to support it, but then also being able to turn around and hire a bigger team, have a source of income for those folks as well, and then turn around and try to lift the community up — the agricultural community, Comer, Madison County. It’s impressive what he’s been able to do.”

CLS had one initial investor, Dr. Strickland’s grandfather, who loaned him the money to purchase some equipment and enough product to get started.

“It wasn’t anything substantial, but it meant a lot to me. I didn’t have anybody willing to take that risk on me,” Dr. Strickland says. “There was a written contract with interest, and I had to make payments. It wasn’t like this was, ‘Just pay me back when you can’. No, it was very rigid. But my granddad was great at doing that and it taught me a lot.”

Dr. Strickland paid off his loan in full within four years, mere days before his grandfather passed away. Having a business built entirely on cash flow has made CLS able to run lean and efficiently, adding both teammates and service equipment when the business could financially stand it.

“I think I’m just so immensely proud of him that he is seeing a critical need and a critical issue. Instead of joining the gallery of just talking about the issue, he thought he might see a solution, and people have been gracious enough to also see that CLS is a potential solution,” Anna Strickland says.

‘The Gold Standard’

In 2025, CLS was awarded the July Business of the Month designation from the Madison County Chamber, and in February 2026, Dr. Strickland was named its Businessperson of the Year. Cory-Lynn Thurston, Chamber vice president, says his name and CLS came up a number of times in the past through nominating procedures by fellow businesses as well as the organization’s board and leadership. However, until spring 2025, Anna Strickland was the Chamber president.

“I think I speak for so many people when I say that Dr. Strickland has been overlooked for such an honor for so long, simply because of Anna’s position within the Chamber and any perception of favoritism that we wanted to avoid,” Parham says. “So, while he had been deserving of that award many, many times prior to, it was obvious to everyone … it really couldn’t have been anyone else.”

Parham and Thurston both met the Stricklands through various Chamber connections between 2019 and 2023.

“To me, another measurable way that we’ve been able to see growth and change is just the familiarity that people have across the community with Custom Livestock Solutions,” Parham says. “It is the gold standard around here in what herd management should look like.”

It isn’t just Chamber leadership with praise of this nature.

Barry Cronic, owner of Barcron Cattle in Canon, Georgia, has long been a proponent of CLS. He calls Strickland an “outstanding” man and “an important part of our cattle operation”. Akins speaks similarly of the effects working with CLS had for Bar A Ranch.

“We also consult with Dr. Strickland on our herd health protocols, ordering drugs and supplies, and any veterinary advice we might need,” Akins says. “Working with the team on our vaccination, fly control, and other herd health protocols has made a significant difference in the health of our cattle and as a result, our profitability.”

A photo snapped by Dr. Strickland at Barcron Cattle not long after CLS opened.

Decade Number Two

Dr. Strickland has a lot on his mind as he closes out CLS’ first decade in business.

“I’m more of a one- to three-year kind of person, trying to work on the things that I can get to that point and then see where we are, see how accurate I was in that prediction, and where things have led to make the next jump,” he says.

The next jump for CLS is expanding its veterinary team this summer. Dr. Isaac Ridings, DVM, a newly minted veterinarian, will join the Comer team this May to enhance its small ruminant service offerings, and Dr. Justin Brown, DVM, Ph.D., a swine medicine specialist, will be headlining the new CLS Southeast satellite truck in the July to August timeframe. Ridings has previous experience as an extern with CLS, and Dr. Strickland and Brown went through undergraduate and veterinary school together.

“I liked Isaac from the start,” Dr. Strickland says. “He just had a good, steady, even keel, good work ethic, good thought process through things. But when he told me he was really passionate about [small ruminant reproduction], I was like, ‘Man, we’ve been looking for you for years.’”

With the addition of Brown in Jesup, Georgia, Dr. Strickland aims to offer more care and opportunities for the state’s pig industry as well as fill the veterinary shortage for that corner of the state.

“We already have a good customer base down there that we work with remotely, but we go for a lot of scheduled work,” Dr. Strickland says. “We can’t be there for emergency services and things like that. We’ve seen that need for a while, and Justin’s gonna be able to plug that need and be local boots on the ground for that region, on top of adding an expert in another aspect of the food animal industry to our team.”

Ridings and Brown will be veterinarians six and seven for the current team, which also includes Drs. Caitlin Quinn, Faith Chamlee, Rachel Anders, and Scout Josey. The Stricklands say looking back to this time 10 years ago, they could not have envisioned what this crazy idea has grown into.

“He basically created his own line of work, is what he’s saying, in Georgia. That’s not for everybody and that’s OK,” Anna Strickland says. “That’s something I’ve learned. I’ve seen what we’ve gone through behind the scenes, and seen the gray hair and the injuries and all. If you’re gonna be successful in small business, to deal with all the headaches that you deal with, it has to be something that you can absolutely not stop thinking about. You gotta have a heart for it, and he does.”

Much of what Dr. Strickland learned in the early days was “trial by fire”. He didn’t know how to invoice clients or structure pricing for labor. He made mistakes and figured out how to never make the same ones again. But he calls that pressure and those lessons a privilege, and says being the family farm veterinarian is a privilege well worth the work.

“You can do this. You can get out and build a practice doing what you’re passionate about and serving rural communities,” Dr. Strickland says. “The industry is hungry for more people to come out and provide that service. It is feasible, It’s just you gotta want it. You gotta get out and beat the roads and let people know that you’re there. I think they will support you.”

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Custom Livestock Solutions is Georgia’s proven source for premiere herd health and management services. Our vets serve large animal herds, show barns and stables in the Peach State and nearby neighbors in South Carolina. Visit us in Comer Monday through Friday from 9 to 5, or call 706-783-8128 to learn more.