Annual hay maze, including flashlight maze, open for fun
By CAITLIN HOFEN, Features Editor
On a cool fall weekend, some Alva residents can be found three miles west of town, trying their hands at a scavenger hunt taking them through Oklahoma’s largest hay maze.
Bradt’s Menagerie is an agri-tourism business featuring a petting zoo, laser tag, animal rides and more from mid-March through November. For October and November only, the hay maze is constructed and added to the experience.
“I make each maze up one bale at a time as I’m building it,” said Jerad Bradt, co-owner of Bradt’s Menagerie. “I don’t even think about what I want to do until I have the hay on the property and I’m ready to build. I originally tried to plot out our first maze on a piece of graph paper and got really frustrated not even 60 bales in. Now, I just build as I go”
This year, the maze has more than 720 bales of hay.
“It’s like the Disneyland of Woods County,” Bradt said.
Visitors can walk through the hay maze during the petting zoo operating hours Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sunday from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. The Menagerie is three miles west of Alva on Highway 64 on the north side of the road between county roads 390 and 400.
The Menagerie also opens for a flashlight maze from 8 p.m. to 11 p.m. on Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Visitors navigate the hay maze by using flashlights as they try to complete a scavenger hunt for a prize.
“We also do a ‘scare maze’ every year with the hay maze,” Bradt said. “That will be Oct. 29, 30 and 31 this year since Halloween is on a Sunday. It’s always a lot of fun and brings a large crowd.”
The Menagerie started out as a way for Jerad and his wife, JoDe, to teach their sons responsibility on the farm. This idea expanded and grew into the petting zoo and all the other activities they provide.
“If you would’ve told JoDe or me we’d be doing this 15 years ago, we would’ve laughed at you,” Jerad Bradt said. “We were literally on our way home with a trailer full of llamas, a donkey and a goat when JoDe said, ‘Jerad, this is ridiculous. We have a petting zoo.’”
All it took was a change in perspective.
“By changing my perspective on having a petting zoo, we found a way for the animals to pay for themselves,” said JoDe Bradt, co-owner of the Menagerie. “We started with a few animals and realized we already had people asking to come out and see them. By September of 2012, we were open to the public.”
The Bradts said they take time after every season to come up with new ideas for the new year.
“We came up with the idea of the hay maze during one of our brainstorming sessions,” JoDe Bradt said.
“We sit down with our three sons – Braylon, Brickman and Breaker – to figure out what went well and what we can improve on. We came up with the idea for the hay maze in 2015, and we’ve had it ever since.”
