diff --git a/cpp/apidoc/Windows.md b/cpp/apidoc/Windows.md
index 774482ea1c4f3..e7e83f1946b56 100644
--- a/cpp/apidoc/Windows.md
+++ b/cpp/apidoc/Windows.md
@@ -41,9 +41,13 @@ conda config --add channels conda-forge
 Now, you can bootstrap a build environment
 
 ```shell
-conda create -n arrow-dev cmake git boost-cpp flatbuffers rapidjson cmake thrift-cpp snappy zlib brotli gflags lz4-c zstd
+conda create -n arrow-dev cmake git boost-cpp flatbuffers rapidjson cmake thrift-cpp snappy zlib brotli gflags lz4-c zstd -c conda-forge
 ```
 
+***Note:***
+> *Make sure to get the `conda-forge` build of `gflags` as the
+  naming of the library differs from that in the `defaults` channel*
+
 Activate just created conda environment with pre-installed packages from
 previous step:
 
diff --git a/python/doc/source/development.rst b/python/doc/source/development.rst
index 3ca460d463a06..7ef6a722be1dc 100644
--- a/python/doc/source/development.rst
+++ b/python/doc/source/development.rst
@@ -257,7 +257,8 @@ First, starting from fresh clones of Apache Arrow and parquet-cpp:
 .. code-block:: shell
 
    conda create -n arrow-dev cmake git boost-cpp ^
-         flatbuffers snappy zlib brotli thrift-cpp rapidjson
+         flatbuffers snappy zlib brotli thrift-cpp rapidjson ^
+         -c conda-forge
    activate arrow-dev
 
 As one git housekeeping item, we must run this command in our Arrow clone: