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I would paper them and see if any are high papers.

Bootstrapping is easiest to do with a *Star stallion and whatever mares you may have lying around (foundation or non benchmark meeting lined mares). Most of the experienced bootstrappers are happy to pass along good colts to someone just starting out for a nice price, we all are also swimming in colts each season. I saw you have another thread to look for a colt in the meantime, so you are on the right track there.

A good sized herd of quality *Gold mares is going to be more expensive to build up to use a lower quality stallion. I have used this method to boost the quality of other lines after I was getting a large surplus of golds from bootstrapping.

With bootstrapping, you will want to do genetics, PT, and paper testing. Do not use Breeding Advice on these horses since they will not pass. After that it's a good idea to turn off testing so that you don't accidentally put them through BA later. Keep all the mares you get to breed back to their sire once they're of age. Colts you can sort through and geld based on paper and/or genetics. My herd is pretty homogeneous at this point as I culled or bred out any genes I don't like.

Yes! You can certainly take a mare you might normally spay and put her with your bootstrap herd. Just remember that stallion's can only breed 50 times a season, so at some point you may need more than one stallion to cover all the mares if you desire lots of show foals.

I see that you are getting a colt from Pixie. He is actually a decendant out of my bootstrap herd that started with a DarkStar bred colt. I started a thread about a month ago and discovered that my boys were very high stars. To the point where I likely can't get superior colts without boosting. So the boy you are getting is a very high star. As far as determining who to keep, once you get several "generations" in and colts start passing BA, you will want to begin comparison testing to pick out the best breeders. With the stallion you're getting don't be surprised if you never get a superior son.