I haven't experienced any difference in upkeep, but if you want clean legged hens, you should find a different breed than marans. All marans are french and all marans should have leg feathering. A clean legged marans is not a true marans :)
Ridiculous right? Furtunately i was able to find some really good quality breeders and i just set 10 eggs of top quality breeding stock in my incubator. I'm not keeping all of them and would love to get you some of them but i live in belgium, and don't have a shipping permit, so that's not going...
If you can get genuine columbian marans (not made by crossing with a sussex, but the old type) i will eat my shoe 😂 they're the rarest! Black coppers usually lay the darkest, if you live in america chances are low you'll actually get good dark colour. Most wheatens are quite good, but some lack...