ABSTRACT The present study was conducted to evaluate whether dietary hot pepper waste powder (HPWP) would affect the performance and small intestine histology parameters in Japanese quail chicks. A total of 160, one-day-old Japanese quail chicks were divided into 4 treatment groups of similar mean weight, comprising 4 subgroups of 10 chicks each. Chicks were fed on their basal diet supplemented by 0, 100, 200 or 400 mg/kg of dietary HPWP for each kg of starter (0 to 10 days), grower (11 to 24 days) and finisher (25 to 42 days) diets for 7 weeks. At the end of 42 days of age, 10 birds per subgroup were slaughtered and intestinal samples were taken to evaluate histomorphological analyses. The results showed that dietary HPWP supplementation did not affect performance parameters, but 400 mg/kg HPWP supplementation tended to increase the growth performance of the chicks. The villus length, submucosa layer (p<0.05), serosa, muscular layer, villus-crypt length ratio, and villus surface area increased with HPWP supplementation (p<0.01). The goblet cell numbers of the group receiving 200 mg/kg HPWP increased compared to the control and 400 mg/kg HPWP supplementation groups (p<0.05). It could be concluded that dietary HPWP supplementation could improve gut health in quails.