Try to freeze only the scale transform. There's a bug in maya 2018 prior to 2018.4 that modify the direction of your transform on objects with non uniform scale.
its already integrated, the combing features might not be as advanced as the ones from hairfarm are, but the hair and fur modifier can do a pretty decent job :)
Channel box, click on the button in the top right hand corner of Mayas UI to open it. It displays and lets you modify parameters for objects and tools.
The Skin Modifier in Blender's actually a really good suggestion by JR. I had a fiddle with it a while back when it was still in beta and was quite impressed.