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You have found a wonderful group of folks who either live in Oklahoma or wish they lived in Oklahoma
You are our favorite kind of new person to the thread - you want to acquire chickens and you are asking for assistance in acquiring them
(not that any of us are addicted to acquiring chickens or anything or that we would try and "enable you" in acquiring an addiction to attending poultry auctions or hatching eggs or anything like that
)
All eggs from hens fed the same thing, taste the same - regardless of the color of shell. That said, are you sure you don't want to add an Easter Egger or two and get some green eggs to go with your "colorful eggs from cheerful chickens?" That would give you a real "Martha Stewart" variety of egg colors.
You might want to do some reading on one of the marans threads before you invest more than the average amount for a maran hen. Just because they are a maran, doesn't mean their eggs will be a really dark chocolate brown. Different lines of birds have different colored eggs and the egg color can vary from week to week even with the same bird, since the color of the egg is layered over a white inner shell and the age of the bird and how long it has been laying within an egg laying cycle will affect the color of the shell. In other words, use caution when acquiring marans if dark colored shells are really important to you.
Have you identified your shelter for the birds? The size will affect how many birds you will be able to happily house. Of course, there are some of us who acquire the birds first and then start building additional coops and runs. I won't call names, but we know who we are