A sheep's face drawn head-on: two horns curling down and inward around a vertical nose, framed by ears — the mirror image of 牛's horns, which sweep up and out. Scribes needed only that one difference in curve to tell the flock from the herd. Wherever 羊 hides inside a character, something to do with goodness or savor is rarely far behind.
A piece of culture
A big sheep is beautiful Ancient scholars explained 美 (měi), "beautiful", as 羊 (sheep) sitting on top of 大 (big) — you already know that second half. In a herding economy, a large, fattened sheep was the picture of abundance and worth admiring, so "big sheep" became the word for beauty itself. The same radical shows up in 善 (goodness) and 鲜 (fresh, delicious — sheep plus fish), a whole cluster of characters where the shepherd's flock quietly stands for everything worth having.
Use it in a real word
山羊
shānyáng · saan1 joeng4
goat — literally "mountain sheep"; 山 you met in chapter one