Animals are around for various purposes on this world. Meat, companionship as pets, workers as draft animals or protection as guard dogs etc, or just fitting in as parts of God's grand plan.
Animals don't have souls, but they DO experience physical pain and suffering just as we do. To cause an animal to suffer needlessly is cruel. Recognition of that cruelty is what makes us different from animals. A cat will toy with a mouse and torture it without any thought of how the mouse feels about the situation or implications of "right and wrong".
Many animals DO also show some evidence of limited emotions. A dog will show all the signs of being lonely or sad when he's left alone, joy when you return, fearfulness, remorse when he knows he's been misbehaving, and even a sense of humor at times.
If your experience with the animal world is limited to chickens, you just might have an incomplete view of the world from which to base your opinions on what animals are capable or incapable of experiencing.
Even a small animal is sensitive to its owner's emotions and pain. Our family dog would sit by my bedside (when I was a child) when I was sick, and wail. There is definite psychic interaction between animals and humans. I believe animals have some genetic, God-given capacity to understand human emotional needs so that they can interact well with humans, which helps guarantee their survival.
Actually, I think animals "appear" to suffer as humans do, but they don't have the consciousness to experience it as pain as we do.