@MyGed = <MYFILE>;

##</code><code>##

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;

my $file_in = "C:/Users/Jill/Documents/Genealogy/birdt.ged";
open my $FILE, "<", $file_in or die "could not open $file_in $!";  # three-argument open syntax
my @ged = <$FILE>;                                                 # slurp the file contents into @ged
my $count = $.;  # or, as you had it: my $count = @ged;
print "10th record :  $ged[10]\n";                                 # note that $ged[10] is really the 11th record (array subscripts start at 0)
print "No. of records : $count \n";