For many years, I have used the Little Giant, Brower Top Hatch and Lyons incubators. They are all great and have their individual attributes and advantages for hatching chicks.

As demand increased for my pure bred chicks, I kept adding incubators to the collection. As I looked at the shelves of incubators, all humming away with various start and hatch dates scrawled on the schedule, it occurred to me, these things are using a lot of electricity! Not to mention the fact that they were not only heating the eggs, but the room as well.

Time to take the next step to a cabinet type incubator. The box arrived and the unit was completely assembled. I unpacked my new GQF Sportsman 1502 Incubator.

I also purchased the chicken egg inserts for the incubation trays. These had to be cut down to fit exactly in the trays, a simple thing to do.

I put the Sportsman in my hatching room and reviewed the instructions... The unit has an electronic thermostat, though there is also a hole in the side for a dial thermometer. The recommendation is to leave the factory setting and conduct a test hatch before making any adjustment to the units settings.

The interior of the cabinet is smooth and easy to wipe down. The trays insert easily and the blower/heating unit is in the upper most compartment, separated from the incubation and hatching trays by a shelf. Also in the blower/heating compartment, is the water reservoir, which has an insert to increase surface area and thus the humidity level.

My first hatch was perfect! Meaning, that the chicks pipped and hatched on the 21st day, indicating that the factory setting is spot-on! The dial thermometer, inserted in the designated hole through the cabinet side wall, gave high readings (circa 102 deg. F), for a forced air unit, the optimum temperature is 99.5 deg. F, so at first, the dial temp was alarming. I placed a calibrated digital thermometer in one of the incubation trays and it read 99.6 deg. F... so, I relaxed and assumed the dial thermometer location is simply in a "hot spot".

The BIG advantage to having this 110 volt, 250 watt unit, is... you can cascade your hatch. There are three incubation trays and one hatch tray. The hatching tray is located on the bottom, which is good, being that there will be material accumulating there as chicks pip and hatch. You don't want hatch debris to drop onto incubating eggs.

By "cascading your hatch" I mean, you can start 66 large chicken or duck eggs in the upper tray. Then, after a week, move that tray down a level and insert another tray of 66... then another week later, a third tray of eggs. By the third week, the first tray is emptied and the eggs placed (on the 18th day) into the non-tilting tray for the hatch. This frees up the first tray to be replaced with new eggs.

The top three trays automatically tilt from side to side, several times an hour. You can manually override the auto-tilt mechanism with a switch on the cabinet side... so you can level out the trays for candling or removal of eggs not developing.

There are vent holes on the back of the cabinet, which allow for air exchange control, simply by moving the aluminum dampers to cover or open the holes.

The unit comes with pressed paper quail and chicken egg trays... which I have not used. But the quail trays may be stacked in each tilt tray, which makes for a huge quail hatching capacity.

The trays are deep enough to accommodate my Emu eggs, 12 per tray. Ostrich eggs would be too large.

I use the sportsman throughout the hatching season non-stop and I am very pleased with the design, dependability of the incubation temperature and turning mechanism. (Posted on 11/23/11)

Just wanted to thank Surehatch for a great product! My GQF Sportsman 1502 has been hatching like crazy - can't wait to buy another one as soon as my flock get's bigger! Keep up the good work (Posted on 8/18/11)

I recently bought the GQF Sportsman 1502 from Surehatch and am very happy. The unit has been hatching at 95% for the past 6 months. The guys at Surehatch have been exceptional with their customer support. Will recommend this product to all hobby farmers. (Posted on 8/18/11)