 In the late 1950s, egg prices had fallen so dramatically that farmers typically tripled the number of hens they kept, putting three hens into what had been a single-bird cage or converting their floor-confinement houses from a single deck of roosts to triple-decker roosts.Not long after this, prices fell still further and large numbers of egg farmers left the business.This marked the beginning of the transition from family farms to larger, vertically integrated operations.