How to dye feathers?

It's all in the starch.

"...If the color is to be light, the dye liquor may be cold, but darker shades require cold water first, and then slow heating until the water is very hot—though never boiling. The quill and butt, or end, of the feather are dyed first, and later the tip and flues, because the former parts may take twenty or thirty minutes to absorb the color, whereas the tip and flues will take the dye in two minutes. If the stem does not take the color thoroughly enough, it has to be painted afterwards. After a thorough rinsing in warm water the feathers are partly dried by soft rubbing with a cloth, then laid on paper and covered with powdered dry starch. The starch is gently beaten and shaken out, and the process repeated until the starch is fully removed and the flues fluffed out. If starch paste forms on the feather it may ruin it, or if too much dry starch remains on the flues the feather may look woolly and have to be redampened and starched over again..."

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How To Dye Feathers

Feathers, I have feathers

and I hate them so that I can hardly speak.

And I cannot find the happiness I seek,

with those chicken feathers dancing cheek to cheek.