for your early pedigrees, just race to 40, buy a covering at least equal to your birds pedigree, and breed. I believe the stars you get on the covering bird are random, so be selective, if you get a rubbish covering, just discard it and buy another until you get a decent one, then breed your bird with it. Hopefully each time you will have more 4-stars on the new bird than the previous.

The gender of the new bird is irrelevant until you have a ped-8 bird, when you breed that, you want the offspring to be the opposite gender to your ped-8. That way when your ped-9 bird is retired, you can breed it with your ped-8 (it's parent, yay incest) both of which should be quite decent.

The abilities are not quite as strict as they used to be (you used to ONLY be able to get lv3 abilities from racing, no manuals), but you'll still want to get a decent hereditary ability. It's best to decide early on which abilities you'll want on your final bird, then when it learns either of those, keep carrying it through each time you breed a new bird