Table-1.

The key health and production benefits of nutraceutical/botanical product supplementation in poultry diets.

Botanical additives	Studied traits	Species	Key benefits	References
Rosemary and Cinnamon essential oils	Egg production, meat quality, blood biochemical, immunity, and antioxidative status	Laying chickens Broiler chickens	Improved hen performance, liver and kidney functions, immunity, antioxidative capacity, and egg production quality. Cinnamon oil has hypocholesterolemic and antioxidant properties, improving broiler meat quality.	[8, 16]
Pumpkin (Cucurbita maxima)	Egg production and quality	Laying chickens	Pumpkin can be added to the laying’s diet (10%) to improve egg production and quality (by reducing bad cholesterol levels).	[31]
Garden cress (Lepidium sativum)	Birds’ health and production	Broiler chickens	Garden cress can be added to the broiler’s diet (up to 1%) to improve the broiler’s body weight, biological performance, and health status.	[32, 33]
Fenugreek (Trigonella foenum-gracum)	Growth performance and live body weight	Broiler chickens	Fenugreek addition (1–1.5%) in the broiler diet has some growth-promoting effects on broiler chicken, improving the feed conversion ratio and body weight of birds.	[23]
	Carcass characteristics and meat quality	Broiler chickens	Better product quality was observed when fenugreek seed was added up to 3% in the commercial broiler diet.	[24]
Black cumin (Nigella sativa)	Egg production and quality	Laying chickens	Improve egg production, weight, eggshell thickness, and haugh unit. Reduction in yolk cholesterol content.	[25]
	Poultry health and production	Broiler and laying chickens	Promotes bords’ health and production performance. Plays a significant role as a natural antioxidant and immunostimulant.	[27]
	Productive performance, oxidative status, and meat quality	Broiler chickens	Improving broiler performance and meat quality by enhancing antioxidant activities and suppressing lipid peroxidation in meat.	[26]
Ginger (Zingiber officinale)	Growth performance and antioxidative status	Broiler chickens	The supplementation of ginger at the level of 5 g/kg improved the antioxidant status and bodyweight of broilers	[28]
	Feed conversion ratio, body weight, and humoral immunity	Broiler quails	Improving birds’ feed conversion ratio, body weight, and humoral immunity.	[29]
	Egg production and quality	Laying quails	Oral administration of 100–150 μL/kg body weight of ginger essential oil to quails positively affects egg weight and reduces cholesterol.	[30]
Thyme (Thymus vulgaris L.)	Growth, body weight, egg production, and quality	Broiler and laying chickens	Improvement in broiler’s growth and body weight. Improvement in egg production and egg nutritive value of laying hens and reduction in yolk bad cholesterol and triglyceride levels.	[15, 17-19]
Turmeric (Curcuma longa)	Antioxidant enzymes’ activity and body weight	Broiler chickens	Turmeric powder (0.5 g/kg diets) improved final body weight, feed conversion ratio, digestibility, and lipid status in broiler chicks under heat stress conditions.	[20, 21]
	Egg production and quality	Laying chickens	Improvement in egg production. Eggs’ cholesterol was reduced by 25% when layers were fed 4% turmeric in the diet.	[22]
Chamomile (Matricaria spp.)	Birds’ health and production	Broiler chickens	Adding 200–400 mg/kg of chamomile oils to broiler diets improves weight gain and final body weight and decreases microbe activities.	[34, 35]