Patent ID: 6880488

Claim:
A method of loading live poultry into cages, comprising the steps of: providing a trailer mounted conveyor loading system having a deposit station, an assembly and movement station, a weighing station, a conveying station, a cage loading station, a cage storage station and a cage deployment station; providing the loading system with a power unit and a control system; providing live poultry to the deposit station; loading live poultry from the deposit station onto the assembly and movement station; conveying the live poultry from the assembly and movement station to the weighing station, weighing the live poultry by the batch at the weighing station until a predetermined batch weight is achieved, sensing the predetermined weight of the batch and automatically depositing the batch onto the conveying station; conveying the batch of live poultry through the conveying station to the cage loading station; and providing a multi-leveled cage at the cage loading station to accept the batch of live poultry, conveying the batch of live poultry into the cage, moving the loaded cage downwardly in multiple vertical increments until the multiple levels of the cage are full from the cage loading station to the cage deployment station for off loading to a conveyance means, moving a subsequent cage from the cage storage station to the cage loading station.