Gold capped conure, aratinga  auricapilla jandaya, are about 30cm (12 inches) when adult size. Their weight will be between 110 and 130 grams and will achieve 90% of their adult size by 4 months of age. It has the whole head, neck and part of the upper breast rich, bright yellow, merging into the rich red of the under parts. The thighs are olive-green sometimes marked with a few red feathers. Upper parts are green except for the lower back which is orange-red. The flight feathers and the tip of the tail are bright blue.

Immature birds have the yellow or orange feathers paler, edged with green or occasionally replaced with some green feathers.

The jenday conure is  easy to train tricks, and  they love to lay on their back- even in your hands.  They  love to be held and yet they are extremely playful.  A jenday is a very good  family bird because they will tolerate the loudness of a family and the quick actions of children.  Although young children must be watched with any bird. They love to play with toys and are always happy to have new ones.  Jendays love to be under covers and in little house or whatever else you might provide for them to crawl in.  They will love to climb in your clothes and will quickly run under your covers and go to bed with you (although this is very dangerous and highly recommended that you never fall asleep with your bird).

The best diet for a jenday  Conure would be pellets and lots of fresh fruits and vegetables.  With a good pellet diet additional vitamins are not necessary except maybe spirulina.  Spirulina will enhance the color on your jenday and make those brilliant colors even more vibrant.  There are a lot of mixes on the market today which will broadened a vegetable and fruit diet.  Seed should be fed only in small portions by hand, maybe when doing trick training or “good-bird” offerings.

A must with any parrot is a water bottle system.  This will provide fresh, clean water to your bird at all times, even when you aren’t home for a couple of days.

If you do pair up two jenday conures, you will find that they will usually breed at about 2 years of age.  They can only be sexed either by blood DNA sexing or surgically by a qualified vet. For their nest box any cockatiel size nest box will work.  They do love to chew wood so a ABS plastic nest box should be considered.  Provide pine shavings, and eculupytus in your nest box.  The female will usually lay 3-4 eggs. Incubation time is about 26 days, although they don’t always sit on the eggs immediately. Quite commonly the first 1 or 2 clutches will not be fertile.  And even their after, if fertile eggs are laid, they may make terrible parents the first time around.  But they usually  make pretty good  parents once they have the system down.