Batching draw calls changes shadows?

Hey, folks.

PICTURE OF THE PROBLEM: http://imgur.com/CZEW1

So, I've got an object I'm instantiating, and when it becomes batched (or when there are more than one of the object) the object's texture changes from a nice gradient shadow to a blobby looking shadow--it looks like a toon shader is on it instead of the mobile diffuse shader. Do you know of any situations where this happens? Or do you know how to stop it from happening while still batching the draw calls for the object? What could the problem be here?

I'm pretty sure it's got to do with batching, since to disappear the objects scale down, and I can see as soon as they start scaling down, they go back to the normal, gradient shadow. Is scaling the object constantly a tiny bit an acceptable work-around? Could it have something to do with the baking of hte object's texture in maya?