A good sitter week is built in the days before you leave, not in a worried phone call from the airport. The sitter is competent with animals in general and a stranger to yours in particular: your gate that sticks, your pony who barges, your water system with its one odd tap. Prepare the full set in order — a written routine for every animal group, feed measured out or labeled by day, water systems shown working, the vet, emergency and owner contacts in one place, a short what-never-to-do list, and a walkthrough together before the week starts — and confirm the sitter's agreed terms in writing as part of the same preparation.
A Written Routine for Every Animal Group
Write the routine group by group, in the order the day actually runs. For each group of animals, state what they are fed, how much, at what times, where they are turned out or let out, when they come back in, and what gets checked while the sitter is there — water, fencing, feet, udders, eggs, whatever that group genuinely needs. Add the quirks that matter in plain words: the gate that must be chained because one goat tests it, the horse who is fed first because he frets, the hens who must be shut in before dark because a fox works the lane. Keep the writing short enough to be used at the feed bin in the rain, and put times on everything, because a routine without times is a description, not a schedule. The whole routine is shared through the Family Sharing pages for the smallholding, so the sitter reads the same version you wrote, not a forwarded copy.
Measure feed out or label it by day wherever you can. Bags or tubs marked by day, with the scoop that belongs to them, remove the two classic sitter errors — the double feed and the missed feed — and they let the sitter see at a glance whether a day's feed has been done.
Water Shown Working, Contacts in One Place
Do not just describe the water systems; show them working on the walkthrough. Fill a trough together, run the hose or pump the sitter will use, show where the stopcock and any backup water live, and say what to do if a pipe freezes or a trough is found dry. A water failure is a realistic emergency in any single week, and the sitter who has already worked the system once handles it calmly.
Put the contacts in one place, on one page: your phone number and where you will be, a neighbor or friend who can come in person, the vet's number including the after-hours route, and the farrier or another practical contact if feet are likely to matter. Add what the sitter is authorized to do — call the vet at their judgment and you will cover it — because a sitter hesitating over cost while an animal worsens is a failure of preparation, not of the sitter.
The Never-Do List, the Terms and the Walkthrough
Write a short what-never-to-do list, and keep it short so it stays powerful: never turn the horses into the top field, never leave the yard gate open while the dogs are loose, never feed anything not labeled, never try to catch the nervous mare alone — call the neighbor instead. Five lines a sitter remembers beat a page they skim.
Confirm the sitter's agreed terms in writing before the week begins: the exact dates, the pay and when it is paid, which animals and jobs are included, use of the house, and how and when they should contact you with problems. Then do the walkthrough together, on the ground, with the sitter doing the feed round and the lock-up while you watch, so every unclear line in the routine surfaces while you are still there to fix it.
Walk the sitter through the smallholding using the Family Sharing checklist on KinsLe, and questions surface while you are still there to answer them.