their lives are only bad if you assume they possess adult human level of conscience, which they obviously don't.
A few numbers I personally find telling:
- 550 cm² caged area per hen (roughly 10" by 10")
- Seven hens per cage
- Cages 45 cm tall
- No requirement for ever going outside
I know some animals usually have it better (cattle) but industrially farmed chicken and porks really are miserable, without even going into the levels of stress and disease they go through.
and you are aware that even humans, with our much longer lifespan and much higher cognition, can endure living in captivity for years just fine, right? hell, even outside of captivity, a double digit percentage of us doesn't have a single room of living space, and the only outside most of us see is covered with asphalt and concrete.
I do imagine they experience a lesser degree of psychological suffering, of the kind created by mental processes, if some of those processes are absent. But the basic pain of the type experienced by a being who is caged and killed, that's just physical.
I've sometimes heard the words pain and suffering used to separate these two types out. If you accidentally hit your toe on the table, that's pain. If you then call yourself an idiot for doing that, that's suffering. But that's not a very mainstream use of the word, I just just don't know better one for it. I think "physical suffering" and "psychological suffering" are more helpful.
Anyway my point is, that as far as we can tell we're on the same pages animals as far as physical suffering goes.
Good thing you're totally sure they don't have consciousness though. The alternative would be a bit unpleasant I imagine.