diff --git a/go/arrow/memory/mallocator/mallocator.go b/go/arrow/memory/mallocator/mallocator.go
index 59d240a1063e8..9483bdfc2a05f 100644
--- a/go/arrow/memory/mallocator/mallocator.go
+++ b/go/arrow/memory/mallocator/mallocator.go
@@ -60,10 +60,19 @@ func (alloc *Mallocator) Allocate(size int) []byte {
 	}
 	ptr, err := C.calloc(C.size_t(size), 1)
 	if err != nil {
-		panic(err)
+		// under some circumstances and allocation patterns, we can end up in a scenario
+		// where for some reason calloc return ENOMEM even though there is definitely memory
+		// available for use. So we attempt to fallback to simply doing malloc + memset in
+		// this case. If malloc returns a nil pointer, then we know we're out of memory
+		// and will surface the error.
+		if ptr = C.malloc(C.size_t(size)); ptr == nil {
+			panic(err)
+		}
+		C.memset(ptr, 0, C.size_t(size))
 	} else if ptr == nil {
 		panic("mallocator: out of memory")
 	}
+
 	atomic.AddUint64(&alloc.allocatedBytes, uint64(size))
 	return unsafe.Slice((*byte)(ptr), size)
 }