Hello Ants4ever7;
I tried feeding protein jelly to my colonies, hoping it would be a good substitute for insects while I was away on vacation. Unfortunately, my ants didn't seem to like it. Others may have had better results. If you're looking for a liquid protein, I'd suggest raw egg yolk. My ants like egg yolk cooked, yours might like it raw as well.
If you've read the posts recommended above, you'll know that I feed mainly meat products to my ants. I rarely feed insects to my larger colonies, I feed some insects, like flies, to smaller colonies along with their meat ration. Right now, I feed cooked chicken and turkey dark meat, cooked chicken and turkey liver, cooked egg yolk, raw ground pork, cooked salmon and canned dog food (the inexpensive dollar store kind). For small colonies I include small pieces of crickets, all kinds of flies, earwigs, beetles etc. I don't feed any lunch meat or other processed meat, too afraid of salt or preservatives harming my ants.
If your colonies are small or shy, you might find they'll take protein better if you place it under some kind of cover, I use the feeding tray. Even something as simple as a small, dried leaf gives shy ants cover and the confidence to forage longer and take more food if they don't feel exposed while doing so.
This is a good sized Tetramorium colony enjoying their ration of chicken liver and egg yolk. I don't know how many crickets it would take to replace this amount of protein, but I do know there'd be a lot more trash to remove when the ants were done with it.
RPT
My father always said I had ants in my pants.