Accounts from the first Thanksgiving dinner suggest the Pilgrims and Native Americans may not have actually eaten turkey. But that hasn’t stopped turkeys from being gobbled down on the federal holiday.

The vast majority of those turkeys are Broad Breasted Whites – the lumbering white-feathered birds that yield pounds of breast meat. But not all turkeys are created equal. For the connoisseur, “heritage turkeys” are the only way to go.

“I’ve never talked to a person who has tried heritage turkey that says: ‘Oh, well, I prefer the bulk grocery store commodity turkeys’,” said Ryan Walker from the Livestock Conservancy – a group which works to protect endangered farm animals from extinction.

Compared to Broad Breasted Whites, heritage turkeys share far more characteristics with the wild turkeys that the Pilgrims might have hunted centuries ago.

For one thing, they are able to carry out basic functions expected of birds. Broad Breasteds have been bred to have such massive chests that they can’t walk very well. They also can’t fly, and males certainly can’t mount females to sire offspring.

“They need to lift themselves off the ground in order to breed. And just the weight of that huge breast in Broad Breasted Whites don’t allow them to do that,” Walker said.

A certified organic heritage breed Narragansett turkey flies from a perch. Photograph: Bloomberg/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Heritage turkeys, a term which encompasses 12 different turkey varieties, grow at a slower rate than their massive-chested cousins, having been bred less aggressively.

To be classed as a heritage variety, a turkey needs to be able to mate naturally, to be able to live a normal (for turkeys) life in the outdoors – meaning it can fly and run around – and grow at a slower rate than Broad Breasted Whites.

In the US there are more than 250 million of the latter, which tend to be reared in giant factories. They’ve been bred to grow to slaughtering size by as little as 14 weeks, whereas heritage birds – which include the White Holland, Beltsville Small White and Bourbon Red – are killed at 26-28 weeks.

Broad Breasted Whites became de rigueur in the 1960s, as breeders moved toward supplying the most meat at the smallest price. Their popularity, and ubiquity, saw the number of heritage turkeys fall to a dangerous low by 1990, as they were forced out of the market.

That’s when efforts to revive the more traditional fowl began.

“We really started the revival of heritage birds in 1997,” Walker said.

That year there were just over 1,300 “breeding birds” – those birds charged with laying eggs and creating the next generation – for heritage turkeys. The Livestock Conservacy uses the number of breeding birds as its standard for monitoring numbers, and Walker said the total number of heritage turkeys would have been between five to eight times that number – still a minuscule amount in comparison with the Broad Breasted Whites.

By 2006 there were 10,400 birds, and by 2016, the last time a turkey census was carried out, there were about 14,500. It’s progress, but those figures, like the turkeys themselves, are dwarfed by the number of Broad Breasted Whites – which, according to the non-profit Heritage Turkey Foundation, represent 99.9% of turkeys sold in supermarkets.

A certified organic heritage breed Narragansett turkey. Photograph: Bloomberg/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Although the work of the Livestock Conservancy and others has replenished the heritage population, the Beltsville Small White remains vulnerable, Walker said, and remains in the conservancy’s “critical” range of conservation.

“It was designed by the USDA in order to fit well into apartment-sized refrigerators so it was built as a convenience in order to you don’t have to buy a gigantic turkey and figure out what to do with it in limited space,” Walker said.

But at around the same time that people should have been stuffing Beltsville Small Whites into their fridges, the Broad Breasted White came into being and began to corner the market. Walker hopes that by the next census, in 2026, the turkey may be figuratively out of the woods.

As for why people should choose a heritage breed, food experts say it is simply down to the taste.

Heritage turkeys tend to be bred on farms, strutting about and sometimes flying into trees, before being killed, whereas the trundling Broad Breasted White leads a more sedentary lifestyle.

The exercise and muscle use produces a larger proportion of dark meat, making for a tastier turkey.

There is a downside to the more spry birds, however. Heritage turkeys’ longer lives mean they need more food, while allowing the turkeys to roam free involves having to chase them around before slaughter.

That means they cost far more than the broad breasted whites – about $8 a pound, compared with around $1.60 per pound for the more muscular chested birds.

But for those prepared to fork out the extra, they’ll be buying a bird that can walk properly, actually fly, and is able to mate – a bird far closer to the birds that the thanksgivers would have known almost 400 years ago.