Vet Sees Rural to Suburban Changes
Lanier Orr experienced firsthand the big-bang-like explosion of Forsyth County, Georgia. The area grew from a few thousand people during Orr’s childhood to today’s 175,000, many of whom commute to nearby Atlanta. Orr, 69, grew up in Forsyth, on the...
Vet Sees Rural to Suburban Changes
Lanier Orr experienced firsthand the big-bang-like explosion of Forsyth County, Georgia. The area grew from a few thousand people during Orr’s childhood to today’s 175,000, many of whom commute to nearby Atlanta. Orr, 69, grew up in Forsyth, on the...Lanier Orr experienced firsthand the big-bang-like explosion of Forsyth County, Georgia. The area grew from a few thousand people during Orr’s childhood to today’s 175,000, many of whom commute to nearby Atlanta.
Orr, 69, grew up in Forsyth, on the same land where he opened Orr Animal Hospital in 1975. The property also housed the county’s former animal shelter, which Orr and his wife, Annette, ran for more than three decades. Their son Nathan and daughter Aaron are vets in the family practice, along with three other doctors.
Along with wife Annette, son Nathan, and daughter Aaron, Dr. Lanier Orr (second from left) runs Orr Animal Hospital in Forsyth.
“In the 1960s and ’70s, this was a chicken-growing area,” says Orr, who worked with poultry straight out of the University of Georgia veterinary school in 1969 until he opened his practice. His then one-man operation began by primarily serving large-animal patients. With few exceptions, the practice now sees only small animals.
Although he loves veterinary medicine, growing hay and raising Red Angus cattle satisfy his fresh-air inclination. The veterinarian owns and leases more than 400 acres in Forsyth, and adjacent Dawson and Elbert counties.
He rattles off his Massey Ferguson® grouping: “I’ve got a 240, 253, 362, 6280, 5455, 5465 and a 4609.” Roger Harrod at Georgia Deer Farm & Agri-Center in Roopville, Ga., is his dealer.
Orr recalls the time he and a fellow with a comparable-size John Deere were working the same field. “His new tractor kept running hot and he’d have to stop. He wanted to know what I was doing differently.” Simple, replied Orr: “The grass is green. Tractors are supposed to be red.”
