Claire Wathes

(Dorothy) Claire Wathes née Bulman (born 1953) is a British veterinary researcher who studies the reproduction of farm animals. She is known for her work on infertility in dairy cattle. As of 2018, she is a professor of veterinary reproduction at the Royal Veterinary College in Hatfield. Her PhD on fertility in dairy cattle was from the University of Nottingham in 1978, under the supervision of Eric Lamming; In 1990, she was awarded a DSc by the University of Bristol. She became the first director of the Farm Animal Genetics and Genomics Faraday Partnership in 2002, and she continues to serve on a committee of its successor body, the Knowledge Transfer Network. She has shown that lack of sufficient nutrients is an important cause of infertility. This might form part of the mechanism by which female ruminants detect whether or not they have conceived.

Her awards include RASE's Research Medal (2006) for her work on fertility in dairy cattle, and the Society for Reproduction and Fertility's Marshall Medal (2015).

Personal life She was married to Christopher Wathes, also a veterinary researcher; he died in 2016.

Selected publications DC Bulman, GE Lamming (1978). Milk progesterone levels in relation to conception, repeat breeding and factors influencing acyclicity in dairy cows. Journal of Reproduction and Fertility 54: 447–58 DC Wathes, RW Swann (1982). Is oxytocin an ovarian hormone? Nature 297: 225–27 DC Wathes, DRE Abayasekara, RJ Aitken (2007). Polyunsaturated fatty acids in male and female reproduction. Biology of Reproduction, 77: 190–201 DC Wathes, Z Cheng, W Chowdhury et al. (2009). Negative energy balance alters global gene expression and immune responses in the uterus of postpartum dairy cows. Physiological Genomics 39: 1–13