A farm sitter fails on ambiguity, not effort. Instructions that make perfect sense in your own shorthand — feed the old mare as normal — mean nothing to someone meeting your animals for the first time, on a dark morning, with six other pens waiting. Instructions that can be followed exactly are written for a stranger: ordered, measured and specific to each animal.
Write the Round in the Order It Is Walked
Start at the moment the sitter arrives and follow their feet. Morning round first: which gate they enter by, which animal is fed first and why — the horse who kicks the door until fed, the goats who mob an empty trough — then pen by pen in walking order, and the same again for the evening round. Separate the one-off jobs from the daily ones: the trough that needs scrubbing midway through the stay, the hen house door that sticks and must be pulled twice. If a job only happens in certain weather, say so — if the field trough is frozen, break the ice and refill from the yard tap. A sitter should never have to guess which of two plausible readings you meant.
Give Quantities the Sitter Can Measure
Anchor every amount to a physical object the sitter can pick up. Name the scoop, its colour and where it lives; say whether it is filled level or heaped; say how a hay net should feel when it is right. For soaked feeds, give the soaking time and the texture to aim for, and write out the mixing order for the animal whose feed has several parts. Water is a quantity too: which troughs are checked at every round, which are topped up, and roughly how much drinking is normal for the big drinker, so a drop is noticed. Photographs of a correctly made-up feed, labelled, are worth a paragraph of description.
Describe What Normal Looks Like for Each Animal
The sitter cannot spot abnormal in an animal they have never met unless you sketch the baseline. Note the horse who always leaves his hay until last, the sow who is slow to rise but bright once up, the duck flock that crowds the gate at dusk. Equally, flag the handling facts that keep a sitter safe: which animal must be fed through the fence rather than in the pen, which goat butts when her bucket is late, which field gate must be chained because the pony has learned the latch. These are the details owners forget to mention precisely because they are second nature.
Put Exceptions and Emergencies Where They Cannot Be Missed
End with a single clearly headed page: what must never be fed to whom — the pony on restricted grazing gets nothing extra from anyone's pocket — which animals must not be moved, and exactly what to do and who to call if an animal is found down, injured, loose or off its feed. Your number, your backup person's number and the vet's number belong here, in that order. Then walk the whole round with the sitter once, watch them make up the feeds, and correct the sheet wherever their questions show it is unclear.
All of it travels well in KinsLe's Care Pass, which hands your sitter temporary, clear access to each animal's routine and key details, so the round you wrote is open on their phone at the gate where they need it.