I recommend switching to Blender. You can then paint your feathers on the mesh as a hair particle system emitting the feather mesh, and paint/comb the size and shape of the feathers.
Blender is free and open source. Its community answers questions far more rapidly than Maya's (as demonstrated by this post.) I am having the same problem as you in Maya, and am sad to see no answers here after 3 months.
www.blender.org