I don't believe that the animals being in or not in cages will determine whether or not they will suffer. I'm quite certain that animals experience suffering regardless of any human intervention as a consequence of being alive. I do not understand how you can distinguish between a "normal life" and a caged life, because the result for either individual animal is still the same, they will still be dead and the human will still use that organism for food or clothing. You can't pretend human behavior is any less valid than any other animal behavior and then use that fantasy to justify a separate course of action (free range hunting, for example) that is merely another form of behavior driven by the same end goal. Whether they die in cages or die by the spear, it was human behavior that resulted in the suffering.
I wonder if by removing the human ingenuity from the process and yearning for an idealized environment where we behave with a more primitive set of behaviors and utilize simpler technologies, we can rationalize our actions in a way that makes it acceptable to use other organisms in a way that benefits us. By longing for savagery, practicing killing with savage methods, and believing that such a life is superior, we could manufacture a moral high ground for ourselves, but this is independent from the fate of the animal, which is still going to die.