The study was carried out to characterize the indigenous goat populations and identify breeding objectives of goat keepers in Raya Kobo district. The study area was selected based on the distribution of goat population and agro-ecology. A total of 180 households were randomly selected to study goat production system. The data were collected through four approaches; formal personal interview (questionnaire), focus group discussion, measurement of morphological traits of live animals, observation, and own flock ranking methods. Morphological traits were measured from 510 goats and a total of 60 households having at least five does were participated on own flock ranking. Descriptive statistics and chi-square test were implemented using SAS (2002) for categorical traits and the quantitative data were analyzed through the GLM procedures of SAS. Indices were calculated for all ranking data. The result revealed that goat is the second most economically important livestock species next to cattle in the lowland and midland areas. Income generation and home meat consumption are the major reason of keeping goat in all study areas. Anfit (Pasteurellosis), Fentata (Goat pox) and Entutie (Anthrax) were the economically important diseases in the study areas with index value of 0.298, 0.172 and 0.168, respectively. The kidding pattern seems to be affected by agro-ecology. In the lowland areas, the majority of kidding occurred in January followed by September and July. However, in the midland and highland areas, September, October and January were ranked 1 st , 2 nd , and 3 rd . About 65% of goat keepers in the lowland and 76.5% in the midland had their own buck. The mating method in all study areas was uncontrolled natural mating method. The mean ages of buck selection were 9.08±0.39, 7.01±0.51, and 8.10±0.39 months in the highland, lowland and midland areas, respectively. The mean service length of breeding bucks were 2.56±0.15, 2.57±0.18, and 1.85±0.17 years for highland, lowland and midland areas, respectively. The overall mean age at first service for female, age at first kidding, kidding interval, frequent type of birth, reproductive age of doe, number of kids born per lifetime were 8.49±0.16 months, 13.5±0.16 months, 8.73±0.11 months, 1.46±0.03 kids, 6.78±0.11 years, and 10.5±0.14 kids, respectively. The overall mean (±SE) market age for male and female goats were 8.88±0.17 and 9.28±0.16 months, respectively. Feed shortage, diseases prevalence, drought, and labor shortage were the most limiting factors for goat production although their importance was not similar across agro-ecologies. The dominant coat color type of goats was gray (26.47%), light red (26.08%), white and red (12.55%), and deep red (10.39%). All goats in the highland and midland and most (95.9%) of goats in the lowland had horn. Hanged downear orientation (48.7%) is a dominant type in the highland areas. However, in the lowland and midland areas, most (60.4%) goats had lateral ear orientation. Most (97.3% of female and 61.9% of male) of goats had a straight facial profile. Sex, age and agro-ecology had a significant effect on live weight and most morphological traits. Most linear body measurements increased with age of goats. In this study, all morphological traits were positively and significantly correlated with live weight (r = 0.44 to 0.91, P <0.001) of female goats. The live weight of males was positively and significantly correlated (r = 0.25 to 0.91) with all morphological traits. Although six to seven traits significantly contribute to the model, chest girth (CG) and wither height (WH) were the utmost importance in the prediction of live weight of female (R 2 = 0.825) and male (R 2 = 0.830) goats, respectively. Most (90 to 96.7%) of goat keepers select male goats to be a parent for the next generation. Similarly, about 91.3% of the goat keepers in the highland and all goat keepers (100%) in the lowland select best breeding goats. The breeding objectives of goat keepers were identified using interview and own animal ranking approaches. Coat color, appearance, twinning ability, milk yield and kid growth were identified as breeding objective for does through personal interview. Similarly, coat color, appearance and growth were the most important traits for male selection. According to own animal ranking, coat color, appearance, milk yield, twining ability and mothering ability were the most important traits with index values of 0.357, 0.301, 0.150, 0.148, and 0.045, respectively. Own animal ranking result indicated that the first preferred does had higher values for morphological traits and market price compared to 2 nd , 3 rd selected, and inferior does. Thus, two breeding objective identification methods could be used in combination to reveal the breeding objectives of goat keepers properly.