Why reptiles need more detail than a cat or dog
A dog tells a sitter when something is wrong. A reptile mostly does not, and its wellbeing depends on numbers the sitter cannot see: the basking temperature, the hours the lights run, the humidity the misting schedule holds. A sitter who means well can still leave a lamp on all night, mist a desert species into a respiratory problem, or feed a snake a week early because it looked at them. Detailed written instructions are not fussiness; they are the enclosure's settings and each animal's routine written down because none of it is guessable from looking through the glass. The test of the document is simple: a competent stranger who has never kept reptiles should be able to run your collection safely for a week from the paper alone.
The settings block, enclosure by enclosure
Start each animal's section with its equipment settings, because those are the highest-stakes details. Write the basking and cool-end temperatures you expect, where the thermometer for each sits, the times the lights come on and go off, and the thermostat setting as a number, not a description. Note what is automatic and should simply be left alone: a sitter who helpfully adjusts a working thermostat is a real and recurring problem, so say plainly which dials are never to be touched. Add the misting or fogging routine with times and duration, the water dish routine, and any equipment quirks, such as the timer that needs a nudge after a power cut or the misting reservoir that runs dry on the third day.
Feeding, animal by animal
Feeding instructions need the animal's name, the food, the amount in plain terms, and the day. In a collection, a schedule grid beats paragraphs: this snake eats on the second day of the sit and not again, these geckos get insects on alternate evenings, the tortoise gets fresh greens daily and its weeds only from the bag in the fridge. Say which foods get which supplement dusting, and say it per feed rather than assuming the sitter knows your rotation. List refusals that are normal, because a snake in shed refusing a meal alarms a new sitter into daily re-offers that stress the animal. And list the hard rules: no feeding a snake that is being handled that day, no live insects left loose overnight with a sleeping lizard, no substitutions from the garden.
Handling limits and what trouble looks like
State who may be handled, who may not, and who must never be taken out by a sitter under any circumstances, with the reason in a line: defensive, fragile, an escape artist, in shed, recovering. Then describe normal for each animal, because the sitter's real job is noticing abnormal. A page of reference points works well: this tortoise is always slow in the morning, this gecko is normally hidden all day, this snake soaks before a shed. Against that baseline, list the call-you-now signs: a heat source cold to the touch with the animal lethargic, water flooding a dry enclosure, an animal out of its enclosure, wheezing, bleeding, or a whole day spent in a place the animal never normally sits. End with your phone number, your vet's number, and what the sitter is authorised to do if you cannot be reached.
Handing it over so it is actually used
Paper on the kitchen counter gets coffee on it; a verbal run-through fades by day two. The instructions work when the sitter can pull up each animal's routine on their phone at the enclosure, in the order they will do the rounds. KinsLe's Care Pass is built for exactly this handover, giving your sitter temporary, clear access to each reptile's care routine and key details while you are away, so the settings, feeding days, and warning signs travel with the job instead of living in a message thread.