Classic Eventing Nation

Ema Klugman and RF Redfern. Photo by Sally Spickard.

If you were to run into five-star event rider (and Eventing Nation writer) Ema Klugman at an event, she comes across as unflappable, composed, and dang near serene. I wasn’t at all surprised when I asked her about her feeding philosophy for her horses and her response was straightforward. “We try to keep it fairly simple. Most of our horses are on one grain and one or two supplements.”

Ema doesn’t strike me as the type of rider or horse owner to be swayed by the latest trends and worry about what new supplements are on the market. After speaking to her, I’d have to describe her feeding routine as, ‘if it isn’t broken, don’t fix it.’

However, that doesn’t mean she doesn’t vary routine based on the individual needs of each horse in her string. “They need protein, vitamins, minerals, carbohydrates, all that good stuff, just like a person would. And then on top of that, our high-performance horses, which are pretty much all the horses that we have, need additional support and fuel to do the high level sport that they do,” Ema said. “We do vary their feed depending on the time of year or the lead up to a big competition or something like that. If they’re on a holiday, for example, they’re going to usually get half the grain that they would get if it were the week that they’re arriving at a five-star event.”

Having received three A-level Pony Club ratings and with an impressive competition career under her belt, Ema is far from uneducated on horsemanship. All that experience means that Ema has a critical eye when it comes to her horses’ appearance and condition, as any horseman worth their salt should.

“I feel like you can never have all the horses looking exactly the way we want them. You always have to be tweaking stuff. We vary their programs sometimes to try to get it exactly right and get them feeling right,” Ema said.

But when it comes to feeding, even she calls in the big guns– nutritionists from Sentinel Horse Feed.

“We have really great help from Sentinel. They have a few experts, but they have one locally, Remy Nash, who is great. She looks at our horses intermittently and suggests changes,” Ema continued. “We go over how they’re feeling and how that correlates with how they look, and what changes we might make, or if there’s a different feed we might try, or something like that. It’s all trying to figure out how to maximize the feed that we can give them, to give them the best chance of performing well.”

With the help of these nutritionists, Ema has created a feeding routine that is comprehensive, meeting all of her horses’ needs, but also surprisingly simple. The majority of her string of six horses are high-performance and have similar needs, so just two grains cover all their needs.

“We feed two basic grains. One of them is Sentinel Performance LS, which is my go-to. It’s a really good, fairly high-protein, well-balanced feed. It’s an extruded feed, meaning that it’s like puffed wheat, almost, making it super easy to soak,” Ema said. “Other grains, when they eat them, expand a lot in their stomach because they soak up a lot of the fluid, if that makes sense. Because this is already puffed up, it soaks it up in a way that kind of works better with their gut.”

The other grain you’ll find in her feed room is Sentinel XT Pro, which appears similar to a sweet feed. According to Ema, her horses give it rave reviews. “They love it. If you put a handful in the bottom of a bucket of water, they will drink the entire bucket of water just to get to the bottom of it. I mean, they love it.”

If you’re looking for a feeding program to replicate for your semi-retired horse that you hop on a couple times a week, don’t imitate this one. Competition horses have different needs than the everyday equine, in the same way that a triathlete or body builder needs significantly more calories than someone like me, who works out a couple times a week, but spends most of the day at my desk. For Ema’s top performers, like Bronte Beach Z, she has worked with her nutritionist to balance the energy needed for cross country with the mental stability and bulk muscle needed in the dressage ring.

Ema Klugman and RF Redfern at Great Meadow. Photo by Sally Spickard.

“The advanced horses really need lean muscle, and we don’t want them to be heavy. We focus way more on protein than fat. Obviously I think you need both, but we tend to focus on protein. For horses like Bronte, for example, who we want to be really trim by the time she gets to Kentucky, or whatever big event she’s going to, we need a lot of protein. We don’t want to add an extra 20 pounds to her because we don’t want her to be carrying that around on cross country,” Ema said.

But a five-star horse also needs to have the right diet to keep their cool, instead of running around like a toddler who just ate a pillow case’s worth of Halloween candy. “When they start getting super fit, they eat quite a bit because they need the energy. But at the same time, that can be a little bit hard in the dressage ring,” Ema said. “They’re really fit to gallop a long way, but they still have to behave and stay relaxed for the time that they’re in the dressage arena.”

Feeding a five-star horse is a high-risk business. Without the right support, the risk of a career-ending injury can increase. “They need a lot of energy to not only do that event, but in all of the training leading up to it. They need to be well-supported, because if they don’t have what they need, the risk of injury is higher. There are all sorts of things that can happen if they don’t have the nutritional reserves that they need,” Ema continued.

Ema does have some advice for those of us who aren’t sitting on a five-star horse that needs high-octane fuel. When adjusting your horse’s diet, look at the big picture– not just physically, but mentally. What are they telling you? How are they feeling?

“Indications that they would need more feed, or maybe a different type of feed that’s higher in protein or fat, would be if they’ve dropped weight, if they’re having trouble maintaining their top line, if their coat looks maybe a little dull,” Ema said.

When making adjustments to your horse’s diet, look beyond changing their grain. According to Ema, “It may not just be feed. Maybe they need to be on alfalfa or something, instead of just an orchard grass type of hay. We’re always making sure that they’re feeling okay, especially when they’re traveling, we’re pretty proactive about that. If they’re wild and big, we would generally cut the grain to try to have a little bit less energy and a little bit less weight on them. So I would say it’s a combination of how they look and how they feel.”

And don’t do your horse a disservice by assuming that because they’ve always eaten one way– they’ll always eat that way. “Some of them are much harder keepers than others and you’re scratching your head trying to figure out exactly what they need and when and why,” Ema said. “And it varies over time– maybe when they were younger, they needed less protein and now they’re a little bit older, they need something else.”

Ema’s philosophy of keeping it simple applies to her horse’s hydration as well as their feed. Keeping her horses’ drinking is particularly important for Ema as she travels often, competing up and down the East Coast. If they’re having a hard time keeping up with their hydration, they get their feed soaked.

“When we travel, we will put a little bit of Sentinel XT grain in the bottom of a feed bucket and they love drinking that. I also find that if all the horses are in the trailer, and one of them is super into drinking, the other ones are like, ‘Oh, what’s in that bucket? I want some of that.’ There’s a little bit of peer pressure involved,” Ema said.

Ema Klugman and Bendigo. Photo by Sally Spickard.

Have you ever chugged water and then gone for a run? It doesn’t feel great. Ema’s horses can feel the same way at big events.

“With hydration, it’s not like on the day of a big event you try to get them to drink more. You just want them to drink as much as they feel their body needs. We don’t want them to drink a ton of water right before they go cross country, just like you wouldn’t do that before you go on a big run. But I think the science now is that when you finish cross country, they can drink as much as they want to,” Ema said.

Like 99 percent of equestrians (including myself), Ema thinks more about her horse’s health than her own. When I asked her about her own “feeding routine,” she said she tries to eat healthy, but isn’t a “guru” about it.

“I try to eat very healthy,” Ema said. “Leading up to a big event, I probably wouldn’t change too much. I try to make sure that I have the energy I need on cross country mornings, so I eat a good breakfast.”

In short, for Ema, food is fuel. She thinks about what she’ll need for the day ahead and then adjusts from there. But, as anyone who’s ever been to a horse show knows, food at events isn’t exactly the most nutritious.

“It’s important to try to bring food with you when you go to a horse show or have a plan of how to eat, so that you don’t end up just buying a thing of French fries,” Ema said. “You need to have sandwiches or snacks or something that is fairly healthy, but that will also give you energy. It doesn’t have to be a piece of lettuce.”

As for Ema, “I have been known to have a very large bag of baby carrots and hummus pretty much at all times.”

This article is brought to you in partnership with Sentinel Horse Feed. Learn more about everything Sentinel has to offer your horse here.