Rain tree (Samanea
saman) pod is one kind of the plants containing
secondary compound. It is abundant during the dry
season and contains large amount of underutilized
condensed tannins (CT) and saponin (SP; Anantasook
et al., 2012). Incorporation of rain tree pod into animal
diets potentially may enable manipulation of
rumen ecosystems. In previous studies, it was found
that supplementation with rain tree pod meal (RPM)
at 60 g/kg of dry matter (DM) has the potential to
alter rumen fermentation by suppressing protozoa
and methanogens as well as reducing methane production
in in vitro (Anantasook and Wanapat, 2012)
and in vivo with dairy steers (Anantasook et al., 2012).
However, utilisation of CT and saponins in RPM on
the productivity of dairy cows has not been studied.