Abstract: Live poultry is caused to face in a desired direction prior to engagement of the poultry legs by a leg catching device by dropping the poultry one-by-one off the terminal end of a moving conveyor onto a lower conveyor having poultry leg engaging devices associated therewith. The poultry leg catching devices engage the poultry legs and the poultry are then inverted as they are conveyed to slaughter shackles. A slaughter shackle is configured to receive sets of poultry legs from the leg catching devices in a continuous process. The poultry is delivered to the first conveyor from poultry transportation boxes that are inverted along a horizontal axis to vertically drop the poultry onto a delivery conveyor system from which the poultry are delivered one-by-one to the first conveyor.