Write it animal by animal, not chore by chore
A sitter thinks in animals, especially when something looks wrong at a gate. Give every horse, pen of goats and flock its own short block: name, where it lives, exactly what it eats, and how much. 'The chestnut mare, second stable, two flakes of the square bales morning and night, plus one level scoop of the mix in the blue bin' can be followed by a competent stranger at dusk in the rain. 'Feed the horses as usual' cannot. Put the blocks in the order the animals should be visited, so the sheet follows the sitter's feet around the yard, and note any animal who is fed separately and why — the old goat who eats slowly, the mare who must not reach the gelding's bucket.
Use measures the sitter can see
Instructions fail on units. Pounds and kilos are useless to someone with no scale in your feed room, so translate every ration into the tools standing there: level scoops of a named scoop, flakes counted off a named bale stack, buckets filled to a marked line. Photograph or label the bins if feeds look alike — two brown pellets in two brown bins are a mix-up waiting to happen. Where a supplement matters, pre-portion it into labelled pots for each day of your trip; it removes measuring, arithmetic and doubt in one move, and you can see at a glance on your return whether every day was fed.
Include the never list and the water routine
The most valuable lines on the sheet are prohibitions. Name what must never be fed: the pony who gets nothing extra however pleading he looks, the treats that are off limits, the pasture gate that stays shut. Then cover water as its own instruction — which troughs to check and top up, what to do if a pipe freezes, and where the stopcock and spare buckets live. Water is the chore sitters underestimate and animals feel first, so write it as prominently as the feed.
Say what normal looks like, and who to call
A sitter cannot spot 'not himself' in an animal they met yesterday unless you describe himself. One line per animal — eats fast, always last to the trough, lies down after breakfast — turns worry into judgement. Follow it with the escalation ladder in print: your mobile number, a second person nearby who knows the farm, and the vet's number, with an explicit statement that the sitter should call the vet first and you second if an animal is colicking, cast, or straining and cannot wait. Leave the animals' records where the vet can be handed them if it comes to that.
Walk it once together before you leave
No sheet survives contact with a real yard unchanged, so do one full round with the sitter before the trip, sheet in hand, and fix whatever confuses them. Watch them make up one feed exactly as written. It takes twenty minutes and it is the difference between instructions that were clear in your kitchen and instructions that work at six in the morning with four horses calling. Leave the sheet in the feed room, not the house, and tell the sitter you would rather be rung with a daft question than have anyone guess.
Sending the same routine through a KinsLe Care Pass gives your sitter temporary access to each animal's feeding details, amounts and key notes on their own phone for exactly the days you are away — the written sheet, in their pocket at every gate.