My Jenday's Personality - long

[Fern76]

Ok, I was asked about my Jenday Widget's Personality. He is about 6 1/2 months old, so really is still a baby. I got him from the local Petco and have had him for about two months. He was well cared for and handled every day while he was there and they were sorry to see him leave. He had a wonderful, playful way about him every time I went to see him in the store. Definately the little clown that is supposed to be their personality.

I brought him home and have traveled on short trips with him in a travel cage and he is quiet and doesn't appear to be overly disturbed by being in his travel cage.

He spends a good part of his days in a large cage with many toys and is quite noisy at times, but mostly when someone in the house is coming or going. He settles right back down if there are people around, even when we are not necessarily paying attention to him. If he is being pesty and noisy, we leave him alone until he quiets down. He does spend quite a bit of time out of his cage in the evenings with us and on the weekends.

He is very playful, can be very cuddly, although not as much as I like and really doesn't like to be held close. He can be nippy, but is learning to be "gentle". He practically jumps for joy and runs from one end of the couch to the other screaming with joy when my husband comes home. He spends quite a long time at night preening my husband's hair, ears and neck. It just tickles me and I can't sit still without squirming when he tries it with me. He also gets tangled and squables and wrestles with my hair. He has gotten hold of my earrings twice and that was not fun at all, lol! I'm working hard on trying not to jump around too much when he tries to nibble my ears and I am not wearing too much of my jewelry anymore...

I do think there are some phrases that he may be trying to say, such as "good boy" and "whatcha doing" and "Hiiiiiiii". At night when we put him in his sleep cage he mumbles for quite a long time, it really is adorable to listen to him, although there is nothing there that we really can figure out just yet. It very well could be that we are imagining that we are hearing these things, but sometimes they seem pretty clear.

When I get him up in the morning, he is very quiet and makes little purring noises and is all puffy, really priceless. The last couple of mornings he hasn't wanted to come right out, so I reclose the cage and come back in a few minutes and he steps right up. From there we go right to the kitchen sink and he perches on a bowl with a warm spray from the faucet right there, if wants to get in he does and if he doesn't want to get wet, I don't push it.

He gets a warm breakfast and then about two hours later my husband removes the early breakfast and replaces it with a mostly pellet/seed mixture for the day.

He pretty much will poop for sunflower seed pieces every 15-20 minutes when he is out of the cage and we ask him to. He also is very good at fetching toys (pony beads, small wooden pieces, large buttons) and exchanging them for tiny pieces of pumpkin seeds.

If he gets too out of control: either nippy or too loud (not usually) we just put him back in the big cage and leave him be for a while, he gets better and then he can come back out or not depending on what we are doing. He seems just as happy in the cage if people are around, he keeps himself occupied for the most part.

He seems to be pretty outgoing, not too timid about new stuff and if you play with stuff, he eventually gets into it with you...

He's not particularly happy about the flight suit, but is getting used to it. I just put it on him yesterday for the first time, he did bite quite a bit and was VERY unhappy, he wore it until he took treats and drank a little and stepped up and then I took it off (he probably had it on for 20 minutes). Today I put it on him and he just nipped at me once, I may be getting better at holding him so he doesn't bite, but anyway, he was much more content in it today, was on for about 2 hours, we went on "field trip" up to the bedroom and played on the bed for a while...I hope to get him used to it so he can enjoy the outdoors in the spring and can visit with people without worrying about making a mess...

We didn't think we were bird people, we have always been dog people, but we didn't have time to train a puppy after we lost our dog of 17 years last November. With our children mostly out of the house now, we needed something to take care of and are we ever enjoying having Widget with us. He's my little lovey chicken and a true joy to have around!

Sorry for the longwinded description, but Jendays don't seem to be so popular and someone asked about my experience with them. Thanks RXK!

[RXK]

Hey Fern,

thanks so much for the description. i really enjoyed reading it! i love to hear about Jendays since we have one, so i love to hear about their individual personalities... Widget sounds like a doll! thank you for sharing!

[xafsmom]

Jendayas are great birds! ...except for Xaf. Well, he's great too, in a completely different way.