I have a question about what you wrote above. It would seem that there is some prime actor in that thinking. As if someone thought to give them feathers against the cold. What environmental pressure causes feathers?
Instead what would happen is a clutch of dinosaurs is born with one or some all suffering from the same genetic defect - feathers. This defect would be the cause of all kinds of problems without all the basic skills necessary to keep feathers clean. You could just imagine how messy feathers would be. So, the defect would have to include a secondary defect of knowing how to clean feathers. It might also need another third defect, some form of molting or shedding that worked in conjunction with the reptilian shedding of old skin, although I suppose that feathers with a strong quill and soft feathers might just allow skin to dry out and rub off. No matter what the defect of feathers would also be random. It would also be recessive.
By environmental chance this recessive trait comes during a time of reduced temperature. Allowing the few dinosaurs with featherlike defects (recessive) to survive at a marginally better rate than those with dominant traits. Over time the low temps increase the margin and a recessive trait becomes dominant in some subset of dinosaurs that are the forbears to modern birds. But, genetically how does that happen?
Recessive traits are largely debilitating or neutral, but the killer detail is that they are recessive. If I understand Mendelian genetics correctly, then it's really hard to randomly breed recessive genes, even with environmental pressure. Net, net, net extinction is the actual road when environmental pressures overwhelm a creatures ability to survive in that environment. It takes the mind of man to consciously breed in or out recessive traits and the results are most often a weakened domesticated creature/plant v. it's wild competitors. Dandelions v. domesticated roses comes to mind.
I just see this as a major flaw in the currently postulated Theory of Evolution. For the record I'm agnostic on the issue overall. I believe in God and the correct understanding of Genesis' Hebrew doesn't preclude very long times or activities between 'days'. Nor is methodology spelled out in creation, other than it is by God's power, which by definition is limitless or else he wouldn't be God.
I also accept as fundamental that science cannot rely on faith and that the scientific method is an effective means for discovering new physical truths. None of that threatens my belief system.
First of all, you need to think of tiny pin-feathers such as those in chicken or duck chicks.
Iirc, they are made of the same basic material as fish scales -- so perhaps "feathers" began as modified fish scales.
These early feathers are not flight feathers, they only serve to keep the little critters warm, and do not need much cleaning.
Indeed such feathers are also thought to be precursors of mammalian hair.
So, now we have dinosaurs running around with little pin-feathers to keep warm.
Perhaps when they grow to gigantic sauropods they no longer need, and so lose, those feathers.
But if animals stay small, agile & quick, if they learn to climb trees, then over time, the ability to launch themselves through the air could provide a competitive advantage, and now genetic mutations which enhance that will be naturally selected.
Yes, at some point, birds will need to learn feather-cleaning, but not necessarily from Day-One.
1010RD: "By environmental chance this recessive trait comes during a time of reduced temperature. Allowing the few dinosaurs with featherlike defects (recessive) to survive at a marginally better rate than those with dominant traits. "
I don't know where you get the idea that all mutations are recessive, not certain that's true.
But even recessive genes will get passed on, if they provide a selective advantage -- it will simply require both parents to carry it.
If the advantage is significant, and both parents carry the recessive gene, then their offspring will be stunningly more successful than any others, and the problem of recessiveness will eventually disappear.
1010RD: "I just see this as a major flaw in the currently postulated Theory of Evolution."
But the human genome is "full" of relatively recent mutations adapted because of their selective advantages.
Off the top of my head I can name milk tolerance in adults, high altitude tolerance in Tibetans, and also in South Americans with different mutations, and sickle cells to combat malaria.
Even if these all began as recessive genes, they were quickly adopted by populations which needed them.
So what exactly is your problem with that?